The worldwide price hikes for PS5 and PS5 Pro have seemingly hit the Japanese market particularly hard. As caught by PushSquare, the latest hardware sales data from Japanese publication Famitsu indicates that only 840 units of the PS5 Pro and 558 units of the PS5 (with disc drive) were sold in the week ending on April 5th. Interestingly, the PS5 Digital Edition has continued to do decently in the country, with 12,141 units sold in the week.
This means that, in total, the PS5 family of consoles saw 13,539 units sold. The number is dwarfed by the Nintendo Switch 2, which sold 59,543 units in the same week.
The triple-digit sales figures of the PS5 and PS5 Pro in Japan bring the consoles surprisingly close to the Xbox Series X/S. In the same week, the Xbox Series X sold 803 units, while the Xbox Series S sold 129 units. This brings the total number of Xbox consoles sold in Japan in the same week up to 932 units.
When it comes to lifetime sales, the Nintendo Switch 2 has sold 5,011,059 units in Japan since its launch. The PS5 console family, on the other hand, has sold 7,500,537 units since 2020. Xbox Series X/S, comparatively, hasn’t yet cracked a million, having only sold 696,936 units so far.
It is worth noting that the PS5 has gotten quite a bit more expensive in Japan, with the base model now priced at ¥97,980. The PS5 Pro is the most expensive Sony console available right now, with its ¥137,980 price tag. The relative success of the PS5 Digital Edition likely comes down to the fact that there is a more affordable Japan-only version of the console, priced at ¥55,000.
Japan hasn’t been the only country affected by these price hikes, however. The US, UK, and Europe have seen the base PS5’s price go up to $649.99/£569.99/€649.99, up from $549.99/£479.99/€499.99. The PS5 Digital Edition has gotten more expensive as well, priced at $599.99/£519.99/€599.99. Even the game streaming handheld PlayStation Portal hasn’t escaped unscathed, with its price going up to $249.99/£219.99/€249.99. The PS5 Pro was the hardest hit, now priced at $899.99/£789.99/€899.99.
“We know that price changes impact our community, and after careful evaluation, we found this was a necessary step to ensure we can continue delivering innovative, high-quality gaming experiences to players worldwide,” said Sony when it announced prices going up, which came into effect on April 2nd.
Interestingly, Sony’s recent moves to raise the prices of its consoles have led analysts to believe that Nintendo will be following the PlayStation-maker’s lead to do the same thing with the Switch 2. While Nintendo hasn’t yet made any announcements, analysts have noted that rising memory costs will inevitably lead to the company needing to recoup some of its costs through a price hike.
Notably, even a former Nintendo sales lead has expressed similar sentiments. “Unfortunately, I think eventually the hardware price is going to have to go up,” he said. “I think that there’s things that they can and seem to be doing to try and mitigate that, but I also look at this move on software, if I’m reading it correctly, as a way to make a hardware price increase a little bit more palatable.”
