Following Microsoft's decision to raise the price of Xbox consoles in some markets, Sony has made changes of its own to the PlayStation 5. It's not a straight-up price increase, in fact, the price has remained the same.
But, as reported by Eurogamer, the PS5 digital in Europe has undergone some changes that, while not more expensive, still represents worse value for the consumer.
Instead, Sony has reduced the onboard storage, so gamers get less for the same price. It doesn't generate the "Sony has increased the price of the PS5" headlines, but in a roundabout way, it kind of has.
YouTuber, Austin Evans, got hold of one of the revised units and took it apart to see what's what. Besides less storage, which is now a measly 667.2GB usable to actually install games on, it also uses a lighter fan and a redesigned, slimmer motherboard.
The overall weight of the console is a little lower, which benefits nobody but those paying to ship these things. The changes must also reduce costs for Sony, without passing any of those savings onto the consumer.
Gotta protect those profit margins, right?!
Why am I bothered at all? We cover Xbox here, right? And I'm already mad enough at Xbox after another round of price increases.
The simple truth is that consoles are now worse value than they've ever been. The Xbox Series X|S are both significantly more expensive than they were at launch almost 5 years ago. In the U.S., Sony hiked the price of the PS5, and now in Europe, there's a new digital version with less storage and the same price.
This far into a generation, consoles should be going down in price, not up. Sure, there are significant global financial challenges. But it still feels extremely hostile. It's at the point where it's almost impossible to recommend anyone buys a current gen console.
A console was always an easy thing to tell people to buy if they just wanted to play games affordably, without getting into the minefield of PCs. But even the Nintendo Switch 2 at its price falls into this same trap. These things are expensive as hell for what they're actually offering.
The waters are much muddier than they've ever been. Gaming PCs can be ridiculously expensive, but they can also not be. Is it fun to have high resolution and high detail graphics? Absolutely. But I think we've become too obsessed with this in recent years over what actually matters.
Look how popular the Steam Deck is. I play on mine more these days than my Xbox console, that's for sure. Graphics and resolution do not, on their own, make a good game.
The Nintendo Switch already proved that the concept of a handheld works. With the range of handheld gaming PCs already out there today, I truly think they're a better investment right now than an Xbox or PS5 console. You can take them anywhere, and in the case of Xbox especially, you have Game Pass and Xbox Play Anywhere behind you.
It's certainly where I'd be putting my money right now.
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