PlayStation Bosses Said it May Hike PS5 Prices Due to Tariffs

Gizmodo

14-05-2025

Even if tariffs on China have come down slightly, you should assume all your gaming consoles will cost more going forward. Sony, the makers of PlayStation, claims it is looking down the hole of around $680 million in lost revenue due to tariffs. The company says it has two options to remediate the impact of tariffs: moving manufacturing to the U.S. and increasing prices of products like its PlayStation 5. Knowing recent price increases from Nintendo and Microsoft, pricier PS5s sound highly likely.
Earlier this month, Microsoft and Xbox detailed sweeping price hikes for practically all gaming hardware, including a near $100 increase for Xbox Series X consoles. Sony was certainly paying attention. During the Japanese conglomerate's latest call with investors, Sony's CFO, Lin Tao, said the company may 'pass on' the cost of tariffs to its products.i
The company has a lot of fingers in a lot of hardware pies, but tariffs were especially impacting sectors that include its PlayStation gaming brand. Tao told investors that the company expected to reduce the impact on its bottom line 'to approximately 100 billion [Japanese yen, equivalent to $683.4 million in U.S. dollars] or less than 10% of the operating income forecast.'
Sony stockpiled hardware in the U.S. before President Donald Trump's April 4 'Liberation Day' tariff announcement, but eventually the company will run out. This week, Trump paused some tariffs on China and reduced the import tax on Chinese imports to 30%. Nobody knows how long that will stick, or if the capricious U.S. president will restart his across-the-board tariffs on every country and Penguin-inhabited, desolate island around the world. Sony bosses mentioned how it already hiked prices of its consoles in some markets other than the U.S., including the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, in an effort to keep North American costs the same.
'We are not just simply calculating the simple tariff to come up with 100 billion yen, but thinking of the currently available information and also looking at the market trends—we may pass on to the price and shipment allocations,' Tao said.
The company's 2024 earnings report released Tuesday showed Sony made a 9% gain in games sales year-over-year compared to 2023. The company sold more games in total, even if it didn't sell as many first-party titles as it did previously. However, it was down 6% in hardware sales, despite the release of the PlayStation 5 Pro and reportedly strong initial sales of the company's more-powerful console. Sony hopes to be up 16% by March 2026 for its games unit, even as it anticipates lower income for 2025. Tariffs are a big reason why it's expecting lower sales numbers and a net 13% decrease in income.
Which brings us to plan B. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki told investors that Sony was considering moving PlayStation manufacturing to the U.S. That seems a stretch considering the massive expense of moving the majority of its PS5 production out of China. Even if it manages to assemble all the parts in the states, it would still need to source its semiconductors and other components from elsewhere. The PS5 relies on AMD-made chips, which are still currently produced in Taiwan by major chipmaker TSMC.
Sony's Hiroki Totoki is considering producing the PS5 in the United States due to the Tarrifs. "It needs to be considered going forward" pic.twitter.com/c1cEQIwXA4
— Destin (@DestinLegarie) May 14, 2025
AMD has stated it plans to move its chip production to Arizona, but all of this takes time, and it's not like Trump's tariffs will wait the months or—more likely—years it will take to move an entire production apparatus and finagle supply chains to support U.S. manufacturing. Companies across the globe have largely said they will simply move manufacturing out of places like China to avoid the highest tariffs and take it to other countries with lower tariff rates.
We'd be very surprised if Sony follows through on plans to bring manufacturing to the U.S., but even that won't stop price hikes. If the Xbox Series X with optical drive costs $600, we wouldn't be surprised if Sony matches that with its base PS5. If a PlayStation 5 Pro jumps to $800, suddenly that $450 Nintendo Switch 2 doesn't sound like such a ludicrous price anymore.