Incredibly, never before has the price of a console not only fallen in a single generation, but risen twice…

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that PlayStation 5 will be more expensive in certain markets in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand due to “challenging economic conditions (high inflation, fluctuating exchange rates)”.

The PlayStation 5 Digital Edition (i.e. the version without the Blu-ray drive) has gone from €450 to €500 in Europe (it’s 11% more expensive…). The price of the PlayStation 5 with a disc drive has not changed. In the UK, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will cost £430 instead of £390. In Australia, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition has gone from 680 AUD to 750 AUD, and the Blu-ray drive version has gone from 800 AUD to 830 AUD. In New Zealand, the two models were priced at 770 and 900 NZD, and now go for 860 and 950 respectively.

Sony hasn’t changed the price of the PlayStation 5 Pro (which was already high), but they have changed the price of the PlayStation 5 disc drive! The Blu-ray drive is cheaper. In Europe it’s now €80 instead of €120, in the UK it’s £70 instead of £100, in Australia it’s now AUD$125 instead of AUD$160 and in New Zealand it’s now NZD$140 instead of NZD$170.

Interestingly, Sony has not dared to do this in the USA. Are they afraid it will mean fewer consoles sold? At least the price of the PlayStation 5 disc hasn’t gone up, so we’ve been spared that, although who knows for how long. It seems that a lot of people didn’t want to pay the price of the Blu-ray drive, so they made the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition more expensive, and that’s why they lowered the price of the optical drive.

However, we have to ask: if there is still no talk of a price cut more than four years after the console’s release, what the hell is going on?

Source: Gematsu