While talk of console price hikes have become commonplace in recent months, this latest, albeit not officially announced change in price for the PlayStation consoles takes place in Europe rather than in the US, as many people might have expected.
What’s more contentious about this for many people, is the shrinking of the storage of the new PS5 Digital from a 1TB SSD to 825GB, which translates from a usable storage size of 848GB to 667.2GB.
This is quite the reduction, and despite the new matte finish and the lighter weight of the console, it might not be a trade-off that all fans are going to be happy with.
New PS5 Digital
The model affected is the PS5 Digital, which costs €499 in Europe, and is being marketed by having a lighter weight and matte finish.
Early unboxing videos of the console have described the materials used to make it are likely cheaper, which (alongside the smaller SSD) will be targeted at saving on manufacturing costs. While the change was leaked, Sony seem unsurprisingly reluctant to draw much attention to it, instead focusing on the cosmetic differences in this new model.
It’s currently unclear whether this is a move that is only planned for this version of the console or whether it’s something that may come for the version with a physical disc-drive as well.
Something else that might be on audiences minds is whether or not these are changes that can be used to make predictions about the next generation of PlayStation hardware. While there have been rumours about what the PlayStation 6 might look like, these have remained rumours for now.
With the ROG Xbox Ally X costing as much as it does, it’s likely that Sony sees an opportunity to undercut them and both find more sales and a better reputation with audiences – even if this particular incident isn’t a great start to that hypothetical strategy.
It’s also unclear how widespread this change will be. It might be that it’s just a decision based on manufacturing issues in mainland Europe, but it could also be that it’s a trial run, and one that will see implementation of this new version of the console to other parts of the world.
