If it isn’t petrol screwing you over this April, then it’ll be Sony. Today, the Japanese gaming giant confirmed a massive $100 (∼R1,700) price hike for the PS5, with the PS5 Pro and PS Portal seeing similar hikes globally. That means you too, random Saffa. The changes will come into effect as soon as 2 April, leaving a short window to grab your new PlayStation.
Too Pro for the Sony bro?
“With continued pressures in the global economic landscape, we’ve made the decision to increase the prices of PS5, PS5 Pro, and PlayStation Portal remote player globally. We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide,” it said.
It’s as if the PS5 consoles weren’t already gouging South African’s wallets at current prices. As it stands, a PlayStation 5 Slim (Digital) will run you R14,000 without any deals to spare you. Knock it up to a PS5 Pro (Digital), and you’ll be stuck footing a R21,000 bill. Then there’s the PS Portal handheld, running you R5,800.
The PS5 Pro will see an even larger increase of $150 (∼R2,500), while the Portal sees a smaller $20 hike (∼R350). What these hikes will look like in South Africa, we’re still unsure. We’ve reached out to a local representative of South Africa’s PlayStation distributor, Koodoo, for some clarity on the situation. We hadn’t heard back by the time of publication. We’ll update this article if we hear back soon — hopefully before 2 April.
Sony didn’t mention any other peripherals on the chopping block. With the trend of new DualSense gamepads costing what they do, the company probably doesn’t feel it necessary. We shudder to think how storage solutions will fare in the coming months. The world being what it is, a single terabyte of PlayStation-branded NVMe SSD storage will set buyers back R4,900 — more than the 2TB model we reviewed a little over a year ago.
