Sony will milk current PlayStation 5 owners to avoid raising console prices for new customers
Amid the ongoing crisis in the memory market and rising production costs, Sony's leadership, headed by CFO Lin Tao, has announced a new strategy. Instead of raising the price of the PlayStation 5 itself once again (which had already increased in some regions at the beginning of 2026), the company has decided to focus on "monetizing the installed user base."
Sony acknowledges that due to the shortage and high cost of RAM and NAND memory chips, hardware margins are declining. To avoid passing all the costs onto new console buyers, the company will more aggressively extract profit from those already within its ecosystem.
Despite the overall market pressure, Lin Tao confirmed that Sony has pre-purchased a sufficient volume of memory to ensure production of the PS5 and PS5 Pro through the end of the 2026 holiday season. This should protect the consoles from shelf shortages and sharp price spikes for the hardware itself in the next 10–12 months.