Video games are an expensive hobby, and that might soon get a lot worse.
In its latest earnings call, Sony CFO Lin Tao confirmed that the company is looking into passing on the cost of the Trump administration’s new tariffs to consumers, in turn raising prices on Sony products, per The Verge. While Tao didn’t name the PS5 directly, the gaming division is Sony’s most profitable, and the company just raised prices on PS5 hardware in several regions outside the United States a month ago.
It should be noted that Sony already sells a variant of the PS5 for $700 in the U.S., so the company is no stranger to high prices for gaming hardware.
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As part of this call, CEO Hiroki Totoki also said the PS5 could theoretically be manufactured in the U.S. to circumvent tariffs. That’s probably a lot easier said than done, though. Most PS5s are manufactured in China, which, at the time of publication, is currently subject to at least a 30 percent tariff, but the situation is fluid.
Trump’s tariffs have only been in effect for about a month, and the console gaming space is already reeling. Xbox games and consoles just got across-the-board price hikes in the U.S., and it needs to be emphasized that this is the opposite of how hardware pricing typically moves nearly five years into a console generation. Nintendo recently delayed preorders for its upcoming Switch 2 console in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, as Trump’s tariffs were announced on the same day that Nintendo announced the $450 price point for Switch 2. Nintendo eventually reopened preorders without changing the console’s price, though some hardware accessories got price hikes.
Needless to say, these price increases probably won’t end until the tariffs do.