NEW YORK CITY, New York: Sony increased the price of its PlayStation 5 consoles in the U.S. by about US$50 from August 21, citing tariff uncertainty and rising costs as the video game industry navigates a slow recovery.
The Japanese electronics giant announced the changes in a blog post on August 20. All three PS5 models will be affected, with the top-end PS5 Pro now priced at $749.99.
The move follows U.S. President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports from countries including Japan and China, which have sparked fears of supply chain disruptions and higher material costs for electronics manufacturers.
Sony raised console prices in several European markets in April. A month later, Microsoft followed suit, increasing prices for its Xbox consoles and accessories in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the UK.
Industry analysts had expected 2025 to be a strong year for gaming hardware sales, supported by blockbuster titles like Grand Theft Auto VI from Take-Two Interactive and Nintendo’s upcoming Switch 2. But with Sony’s latest hike and the delay of GTA VI to next year, optimism about the industry’s growth trajectory has dimmed.
The PlayStation 5, first launched in late 2020, has been a key driver of Sony’s gaming revenue, though demand has cooled following initial pandemic-era shortages. Analysts say higher price tags could further dampen sales just as new premium games were expected to spark renewed console buying.
Sony stressed that the changes apply only to U.S. consoles. Prices in other global markets, as well as accessories for the PS5, remain unchanged.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is nearly here, as it hits retailers on November 7. If you’ve been on the fence about dropping a cool $700 , Sony just published a that will offer enhanced versions when the console launches later this week.
This list includes modern favorites like Baldur’s Gate 3, The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and God of War Ragnarök. It also features newer games like NBA2K 25 and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. All told, it’s a pretty decent start. The console will unlock all kinds of graphical enhancements, like advanced ray tracing, higher frame rates and Sony’s proprietary upscaling system called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution.
However, it’s also worth pointing out some games that aren’t on the list. Gran Turismo 7 is missing, despite an enhanced version already being announced. It must not be ready yet. Final Fantasy XVI is also absent from the list, and that one has . The same goes for both Returnal and Elden Ring. Now, just because these games aren’t on the launch list, doesn’t mean they won’t get enhanced versions down the line. It probably depends on .
The PS5 Pro offers more than just slight graphical upgrades to pre-existing titles. It boasts faster memory, support for Wi-Fi 7 and ships with a large 2TB SSD. Digital Foundry and also found 2GB of additional DDR5 RAM and a user-accessible battery bay. These are all nifty upgrades, though I’m still not sure if all of this adds up to me spending $700.
The PS5 Pro improves on the four-year-old standard model with boosted internals. The upgrades start with a GPU with 67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster RAM. These allow it to (at most) triple the PS5’s ray-tracing performance, leading to fancier lighting, reflections and shadows.
In the PS5 Pro, Sony introduces its AI-powered answer to Nvidia’s DLSS, called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). Built for 4K TVs and displays, the tech upgrades lower-resolution frames to ultra-HD graphics “with astonishing detail.”
The console also promises more consistent frame rates (with less graphical sacrifice) and support for 60Hz and 120Hz displays. For games that aren’t updated for the new console, a PS5 Pro version of Game Boost will provide faster and smoother frame rates for over 8,500 supported titles, including “some of the PS4 and PS5 console’s greatest games.”
The console includes 2TB of storage, double the original’s capacity. It also supports Wi-Fi 7 and 8K resolutions.
The PS5 Pro offers those upgrades in a familiar form factor: It has the same height as the original PS5 and the same width as the disc-less PS5 Slim. Like the latter, you’ll need to pay extra for a disc drive or a vertical stand.
The PS5 Pro is officially on its way, and the price for the newest iteration on Sony’s current console is steep. Fortunately, there are some notable visual improvements that come with the console’s $700 price tag, and we’ve compiled five ways your games will look better on PS5 Pro.
A Higher Frame Rate During Fidelity Mode
Image Credit: Naughty Dog and Sony via PlayStation YouTube
A key feature of the PS5 Pro is its increased power, and that allows for some particularly marked improvement in terms of frame rate during Fidelity mode.
As shown with The Last of Us Part II, the frame rate of a game played with graphics prioritized can be doubled to a crisp and clean60 fps. This cuts down on choppy animations during gameplay, and the overall experience of playing the games becomes that much smoother and more immersive.
Sure, you might have to shell out a solid chunk of — if not all — of your pay for an entire week from work, but look on the bright side: you’ll no longer have to deal with mind-numbingly slow movement of characters or rough graphics.
Clearer Details During Gameplay
Image Credit: Insomniac Games, Marvel, and Sony via Official PlayStation YouTube Channel
While on the subject of not dealing with rough graphics, it’s worth noting that the PS5 Pro can render clearer details for objects in the far distance.
Sure, you might have been able to read a sign on a far off building or recognize that those car shaped objects were motor vehicles even with their dozens of rough pixels, but now that isn’t an issue. Even characters or objects that are barely within your rendering range will come through as recognizable and decipherable. And it only costs you the same price as a low end gaming lap top!
Faster Rendering and Better Ray Tracing
Image Credit: Guerilla Games and Sony via Official PlayStation YouTube Channel
But then, we haven’t even mentioned the impact on lighting of the PS5 Pro’s stronger tech.
In addition to the improved features listed above, the new console iteration’s Ray Tracing is significantly better thanks to faster rendering afforded by the better technology. As a result, game worlds and settings have never been so immersive, and even the most graphically impressive PS5 games can look even better than they did before.
Is it $700 worth of better? Time will tell, but the brief snippets of gameplay shown during the unveiling stream on YouTube have us ever so mildly optimistic.
AI Driven Upscaling
Image Credit: Insomniac Games and Sony via Official PlayStation YouTube Channel
All light jabs aside, one genuinely impressive feature of the PS5 Pro is its AI-driven upscaling of older titles.
Using machine learning, the AI program the PS5 Pro uses can sharpen and refine pixels so that the images from older games are depicted clearly and cleanly. To what extent is unclear, but if other AI upscaling examples are anything to go off of, then it could mean older games are displayed to a level of clarity as of yet unseen outside of full-on remakes.
Is this worth $700? It’s tough to say, especially given we haven’t seen much of it in action. Still though, we have our fingers crossed that it makes good on the console’s steep financial barrier of entry when it releases on Nov. 7.
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