As manufacturers battle with the ongoing semiconductor shortage, consumers have dealt with both supply chain issues and inflated price tags throughout the first half of 2022. Things are slowly starting to recover, but as witnessed by the recent Meta Quest 2 price hike, we’re not out of the woods just yet. Comments from Hiroki Totoki, CFO at Sony, only added fuel to the fire, as the executive answered a shareholder question about a potential PS5 price increase by stating “there is nothing specific [he] can share…about prices.” It’s an ominous answer, although it doesn’t sound like gamers will have much to worry about. “An in-lifecycle console price hike without a hardware change has never happened,” Mark Methenitis, video game industry analyst and attorney, told Lifewire through Twitter. “It seems extremely unlikely that Sony would want to be the sole outlier.”
Sony Can’t Afford a Price Hike
Unlike the Meta Quest 2, which is dominating the VR market, the PlayStation 5 isn’t putting up record numbers. As shared by Benji-Sales, an independent games analyst, PlayStation’s profits dropped by 37 percent during the first quarter of 2022. This is driven by a combination of factors (such as the ongoing supply shortage and lackluster game sales), but it all leads to the same conclusion: Sony simply can’t afford to raise prices. William D’Angelo, games analyst at VGChartz, notes that Xbox is already gaining ground on PlayStation, with Xbox Series X jumping to 24.3 percent of the market share compared to just 15.6 percent in 2021. That puts it just shy of the PS5’s 25.7 percent market share, with the possibility of overtaking it by the end of the year. With such a narrow margin separating the two platforms (and underwhelming recent performance from PS5 sales), a price hike in 2022 isn’t the best move from a financial standpoint. A price increase could do more than push gamers to Xbox, as it might also cause serious backlash in the community. Even a cursory glance at Twitter and other gaming forums is enough to know that fans aren’t excited about a potential price hike. The standard PS5 console already clocks in at $500, a number that’s exacerbated by the increasing cost of groceries, gas, and other everyday purchases. Pushing it higher might help Sony improve its bottom line, but there could be stronger repercussions from its fans. “I don’t think that’s a PR position that Sony would want to take right now,” Methenitis told Lifewire.
(Some) Tech Will Keep Getting More Expensive
While experts seem to agree we’ll be safe from a PS5 price increase, the same doesn’t hold true for the rest of the technology sector. Smartphones, earbuds, cameras, and other electronics have already seen inflated prices throughout 2022. That trend seems unlikely to improve in the second half of the year, although it’s difficult to say which specific products will be affected. Japan, in particular, has seen price hikes on a variety of electronics and home appliances, although Methenitis points out this was largely driven by the “loss in value of the Yen rather than pure inflation issues.” A myriad of factors is at play, but the recent Meta Quest 2 price increase proves that wallets in the United States are still at risk. Meta raised its pricing by a whopping $100 this month, marking the biggest price increase in the VR headset’s history. On the other side of the coin is the GPU shortage, which has largely cleared up and has led to widespread availability and better pricing. Figuring out which products will remain steady and which will get price hikes isn’t easy, and it sounds like we’ll have to put up with continued pricing adjustments for quite some time. In other words, it might be best to hold off on that big purchase until the industry begins to stabilize. “Right now, across the tech industry, we’re still seeing some pretty unprecedented supply chain issues,” Methenitis told Lifewire. “While some of those seem to be finally sorting themselves out (GPUs, for example, are finally available in reasonable numbers), others seem likely to continue into next year.”
