In light of recent price hikes for PS5 consoles, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Hideaki Nishino was asked during a Q&A session (via IGN) about whether the company will continue to prioritize hardware profitability with its next-generation console as well. In response, Nishino laid out how the console hardware tends to act as a base for PlayStation to build an ecosystem around, with more products like the PlayStation Portal.
When it comes to price, however, he said that it’s “not realistic” for Sony to absorb the increases it is facing in component costs. This ultimately led to the console’s price going up in global markets. Despite the price hikes, Nishino has said that he doesn’t expect it to lead to a decline in customer demand.
“First, we regard hardware as the base for providing the gaming experience, and by offering products such as the PlayStation Portal Remote Player (PS Portal), we aim to provide experiences tailored to users’ play styles beyond the living room, which has traditionally been considered the primary usage environment.
“As for pricing, it is not realistic for us to absorb all component cost increases, and we have already implemented some price increases outside Japan. At present, however, sales are proceeding as planned, and we do not believe this has led to a decline in customer demand.
“As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring the market and continuing to evaluate our approach. We believe it is important for us to make every effort to ensure that customers fully understand the value we provide in relation to pricing.”
A couple of decades ago, companies like Sony, Sega, and Microsoft opted to sell their consoles at a minor loss, relying instead on the revenue from every game sold on their systems to make up for these losses. However, Nintendo is known for not really selling its hardware at a loss since at least the launch of the Wii, and the same became true of Sony and Microsoft with the launches of the PS4 and Xbox One, respectively. Since then, all three of the console makers have sold hardware at a profit, relying on thorough R&D efforts and use of custom hardware to keep prices down.
Nishino’s statement about the prices not leading to a decline in customer demand is especially interesting in light of the company’s hardware sales in the US marking May 2026 as the worst May faced by PlayStation since 2000. Analysts believe that this is largely due to current socio-economic conditions and the overall rise in costs associated with gaming hardware.
In a recent interview, Nishino had also said that the company plans to make more live service games in the future in a bid to “revitalize the market through both first-party and third-party content.” He pointed to the upcoming fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls as an example of this and went on to discuss how the company could do the same for some of its older games in the medium to long term as well.
