PS5 Price increase collapses PlayStation console sales in Japan, with Xbox gaining
>The Famitsu data includes several days before the unwelcome announcement. Even so, buyers are already shying away from PlayStation consoles that are straining wallets . The PS5 with optical drive moved 558 units, down from 2,801 sold the week before. Not faring any better, adoption of the Pro went from 4,662 to 840.
How? Xbox increased more, and first. And Xbox always did poorly in Japan.
If anyone doesn’t know the history, I think it was NEC, was a big electronics company in Japan that tried to make computers that competed with Windows 95 (because they ran something else, I forgot which) and they got their asses handed to them. So the Japanese have been salty toward Microsoft since then. The grudge has started to fade a bit, but it was still going strong at the start of the Series X|S generation (2020). The problem is twofold: Japanese developers won’t make games for Xbox, only Nintendo and/or PlayStation. And two, gamers aren’t buying Xbox in Japan.
I wonder if Xbox went up at all in Japan. It never moved much there. I wonder if they even bothered installing GamePass CDNs there. I wouldn’t.
Also worth noting, a lot of gamers/power user types in the west have been turning against Microsoft for issues with Windows 11 and Copilot. I got tired of their shit years ago and went to Mac for computers, but I still game on an Xbox Series X.
I do like seeing PlayStation get taken down a peg, because for all Microsoft’s issues, PlayStation has always been more anti-consumer. Trophies exist on PlayStation because Achievements were so popular on Xbox that PlayStation (and Steam) were practically forced to adopt them. Xbox has pushed for cross-play and PlayStation has always rejected it. Backwards compatibility is what the PS2 was known for, and the PS3 did it at first, but since then, they haven’t been as good, whereas Xbox has been great about backwards compatibility. Not perfect but great.
Xbox increased more
Xbox Series X is $649. PS5 is $699.
649<699
Xbox Series X is cheaper than PS5.
As if Microsoft supported Japanese customers
PlayStation and Nintendo were embedded in the market, why would they engage with the Americans?
Given wealth inequality growing in every country, expect this trend to continue.
Higher prices for everything as more and more products become luxury only goods, and everything else is for the peasantry.
It’s because serving the rich creates higher margins, which in turn means higher chance of survival for the company during an economic downturn. In the clothing industry the companies that fared well during the previous recession were companies that target the elites like Hermes. While many brands that served the middle class went bust.
You see this trend in many industries. Like the choices of low budget cars are getting slimmer each year. While the sticker price of mid budget cars have gone up.
Whilst it’s an oversimplification, if the old price only got Y sales then a higher new price was always only going to get a subset of Y.
Console sales go up over time in part because the price goes down, broadening the customer base. Sure, the library gets bigger over time too, but that’s barely happening either.
The Steam Deck, both LCD and OLED models, are out of stock, unless you count Swappa, eBay and other resellers.
Xbox gaining high percentage because they sell 100x less units than Sony.
From that famitsu issue:
Hardware Sales (followed by lifetime sales)
Switch 2 – 59,543 (5,011,059) PlayStation 5 Digital Edition – 12,141 (1,248,515) Switch OLED Model – 7,468 (9,526,329) Switch Lite – 4,807 (6,903,964) Switch – 4,067 (20,0271,045) PlayStation 5 Pro – 840 (341,548) PlayStation 5 – 558 (5,910,474) Xbox Series X – 525 (325,952) Xbox Series X Digital Edition – 278 (29,362) Xbox Series S – 129 (341,622)So, PS5 digital non pro sold 12k units while the equivalent Xbox digital non pro sold 120 units.
If next month a Japanese retailer does a clearance sale and sells 200 Xboxes the headline isn’t “Xbox got a massive 100% increase in sold units in Japan, while Sony tumbled 2%”
Buying the disk version of the Playstation 5 at launch might have been the best investment I’ve made this decade, followed closely by the extra RAM kit and 2TB Samsung 990 SSD I bought in Aug. 2025.
Guess I can eat avocado toast guilt-free 🥹
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