While Sony has been raising the prices of the PS5 all over the world due to a variety of factors, new reports indicate that the company is working on a new SKU of the device with lower storage to prevent another price hike. According to a report by Billbil-kun on Dealabs, a new version of the PS5 Slim, labelled the CFI-2100 model, has been spotted in certification documents with 825 GB of storage.
What sets this new SKU apart from the previous PS5 Slim is primarily the storage. While the console has included a 1 TB SSD for storage. The lower 825 GB of storage is similar to what the PS5 featured when it first launched. Providing some pricing context, the report notes that the PS5 Digital Edition was launched at €399 in 2020, before seeing a price hike to €449, and then as of earlier this year, €499, marking an overall difference of €100 over five years.
With this context in mind, the report posits that Sony has opted to regress in its choice of storage for the new PS5 SKU largely to prevent another price hike. According to Billbil-kun, the CFI-2100 version of the PS5 is also slated to be priced at €499 when it hits stores on September 13. A non-slim version of the console with similar storage is also slated to come out at a later date.
Prices for the PS5 were raised several markets all over the world, including Europe, UK, Australia and New Zealand, earlier this year. Along with general inflation, there have been indications that one of the big reasons for the prices going up like this has been the trade tariffs imposed by the US government to various countries all over the world. Back in May, Sony CEO and president Hiroki Totoki had spoken about taking the US market into consideration when it came to its pricing strategies.
Totoki had also spoken about the PS5’s pricing last year, stating that bringing the price of the console down would be “very difficult”. In an investor call, the company had mentioned that the PS5’s smaller die size contributed to the difficulties associated with bringing the console’s price down.
Despite this, Sony has stated that it wants to keep its business “profitable, as well, we want to focus on user engagement, together with sales of units. We need to strike a nice balance between all of those components.”
Hardware isn’t the only department where Sony has been raising its prices. Earlier this year, the company had also announced price hikes for its PlayStation Plus subscription offerings across all of the available tiers.
“Like many businesses around the world, we continue to be impacted by global market conditions and will be adjusting our local prices for PlayStation Plus,” wrote the company when it announced these price hikes. “This price adjustment will enable us to continue bringing high-quality games and value-added benefits to your PlayStation Plus subscription service.”
Despite PS Plus prices going up, however, the company had also confirmed that subscription rates have been growing all over the world.
