Sony Exec Says PS5 Price Drops Are Unlikely to Ever Happen
It’s a little hard to imagine now, but there was a time when console makers treated price cuts like part of the product roadmap. Systems would launch at a high initial price, then get cheaper the longer they sat on retail shelves, and the companies behind them would absorb the hit to expand the install base.
That approach feels nearly gone for good at this point. Supply issues and memory shortages have pushed firms such as PlayStation, Valve, and Xbox to raise console prices instead, to the point where an Xbox Series X now costs 50 percent more than it did at launch. The result, as many players have noticed in real life, has been a sharp slowdown in console sales. Former Sony president Shawn Layden also points to this dynamic as a major reason the PS5 won’t be able to match the kind of runaway success the PS2 managed.
PS5 Won’t Match PS2’s Sales Thanks To The Lack Of Price Drops
Layden shared these views in a recent conversation on the PSI Podcast, where he compared the current state of PlayStation to the era when the PS2 dominated. One of his biggest points is that the hardware side is dealing with problems that make the old pricing strategy difficult, especially chip shortages that increase the cost of key components. In his view, those pressures mean the PS5 is unlikely to ever receive the same kind of price reductions that helped earlier generations grow.
“I think the hardware business is particularly challenged,” Layden said. “We used to build the business on launch at $399 and, over time, get it down to $199. That pattern hasn’t played out in this generation of hardware. I retired right before the launch of PS5, so I have no insider information on why that’s true, but the chip market as we all know is in super high demand.”
Layden also addressed a common assumption that may be tempting to make when discussing console and software sales: he argues that buying a PlayStation game on Steam doesn’t straightforwardly equal a lost console purchase. In other words, he doesn’t see PC storefront activity as a direct substitute that can be used to justify the current pricing environment.
He then leaned on the PS2 as a case study. The platform, he notes, sold an enormous amount—roughly 185 million units. But when you look at the shape of the sales curve, a large share of that total came in after the system dropped below $199. Layden’s argument is that those later price cuts didn’t just reduce the sticker price; they actively accelerated growth, and that kind of momentum is not something this generation appears positioned to replicate.
Subscribe for deeper newsletter insights on console pricing
It’s a tough thought as the industry looks toward the next wave of hardware. Analysts are already predicting that upcoming consoles could cost above $1,000 and may ship without a disc drive, which further suggests that the era of broad, massively successful price drops could be over. If that’s the direction the market is heading, then the PS2’s reign may end up being more than a historical high point—it could remain an outlier that future consoles simply can’t recreate, especially if price reductions are no longer part of the playbook.
