What the fuck does Europe have to do a console from a Japanese company that is made in China and US tariffs?
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2025
70 points (97.3% liked)
Games
18510 readers
134 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
It’s called an excuse, same as we had with covid, supply chain issues, Ukraine war, energy prices, erc. Capitalist greed is limitless, they will use any excuse possible
If I had to guess, it's probably to keep pricing parity across regions and avoid a clusterfuck of import loopholes.
Didn't stop them when the EU prices were the higher ones due to taxes.
The headline here is confusing and not covering all the changes. Some prices are staying the same and some are actually going down. There's something else going on here and I don't get it.
Or just money, as they already have the ability to region price and region check software?
Yeah WTF? Obviously the rest of the world needs to suffer for the cost increase in the US.. Maybe now is the time to preorder a Switch 2 before Nintendo change their worldwide pricing. It's cheaper than $450 USD here in Australia right now.
Yeah, a great opportunity to raise the prices worldwide!
US prices raised will go to the US government, while the rest of the world compensates for the US applying tariffs.
Just raise the prices in the US because they need to the lesson, not us.
This will be the last thing I buy from Sony until they stop this nonsense.
OK, so this is weird and that headline doesn't tell the full story.
So in Europe the only price going up is the non-Pro base PS5 Digital Edition (by 10%, not 25%).
The PS5 SKUs with a disk drive are staying the same. The PS5 Pro price is staying the same. The standalone disk drive price is actually going down.
So... WTF is happening here?
I'm guessing that the fact the US dollar is collapsing thanks to tangerine man and the Euro is quickly becoming a reserve currency and the exchange rate is going up is messing with things in strange ways? Gonna guess that some manufacturing from some regions is currently more expensive to import but maybe optical drives are still being made in the EU so they can eat some of the costs that way but Australia gets hit by both? I don't know.
Man, what a mess. It's the dominoes meme but with the US having a shit public education system on one end and Australian PS5s getting more expensive in the other.
The PS5 SKUs with a disk drive are staying the same.
What SKU still has a disk drive? I thought both the slim and pro were optical disk-less?
Just quoting the source blog. I'm guessing the phat non-digital SKU is either still in production or still in stock.
Gentle reminder that you can always build yourself a gaming PC for less, especially now that thanks to Proton 75% of the top 1000 titles run on Linux.
You can build yourself a PC for less.
You can't build yourself a more powerful PC for less. Especially since the PS5 Pro isn't getting a price bump in Europe.
You can barely find a dedicated GPU for less money than a base PS5 at all these days. I guess if you go dumpster diving or are very patient in a used parts website you could technically get there, but it'd be a bit of a project.
On initial purchase, without used parts, no. But once you consider savings from online subscriptions over the lifespan, yes easily.
Also, considering what else you can do with a powerful PC vs a PS5 Pro, the additional investment is sound. Even just in gaming, modding would make it worth in a short while.
In February 2025, the most played PlayStation 5 games by monthly active users (MAU) were Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II/III/Warzone/Black Ops 6, Grand Theft Auto V, EA Sports FC 25, ROBLOX, Minecraft, Rocket League, Marvel Rivals, Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege, and Monster Hunter Wilds.
You can play all of these and more at PS5 Pro equivalent graphic settings (not that you would notice the difference anyway) with a PC you can easily build for less than the cost of a PS5.
Yeah, PC is a no brainer with any metric except for plug and play simplicity.
Although with a good pre-built, that point is kind of mute too now. But even so, PCs are so worth the setup, people just don't bother taking the time to learn a little, so instead buy into a console.
Right.
But right now, to play Fortnite tomorrow for 500 bucks that PC will give you worse looks and performance than a PS5.
I don't mind the notion that it's still a better purchase and you get a computer to work and study out of that deal and you have an easier upgrade path and no need to pay subscriptions. All that as it may be.
But it's not a no-brainer at all and it's more expensive in the vast majority of scenarios.
I'd be less nitpicky about this, but it actually was true for a couple of years in the Xbox 360/PS3 generations, when consoles were very limited by several parts of their hardware and PC GPUs were amazing value for money. Think 970-1080Ti range.
But that has changed a lot and it's important to acknowledge that while consoles have become less value by having fewer exclusives and more upkeep costs through online subscriptions, PCs have become less value by an absolutely bonkers bananas insane reduction in GPU availability and value for money. Thanks, cryptobros and AIbros.
It unfortunately takes some thinking and checking options to see what makes sense for a gamer on a budget these days. It's a lot harder than it used to be across the board, and that sucks.
New, it's hard to get under $500, but unless you plan to play entirely offline you will need a PS Plus subscription, which costs at least $80/year. If you have the console for 5 years, that's an extra $400 just to use the thing and you can easily build a brand new PC that demolishes a PS5 for $900.
There is still a bigger initial cost, but you save so much in the longterm with a PC. I understand why people go for consoles, it's so simple, but I'd never recommend one ever.
Subscription cost/value is hard to measure because you can get promos and sales plus you're receiving a bunch of games as part of the package, so... sure, that's 80 bucks a year for basic and what? 120+ for the higher tiers, but how much that is a straight add to the cost of the hardware does depend on how much of that money you'd have spent buying the games new (or still signing up to Game Pass if you were eyeing an Xbox instead, I suppose).
So that is valid back-of-the-envelope math, but not really accurate.
Plus the "only play offline" scenario is still a viable use case. I cancelled my PS Plus and Xbox Live subs because I only ever played offline games on consoles.
"I wouldn't recommend one ever" is just not a reasonable stance today, and I don't know if I'd say you can build a PC that "demolishes a PS5" for that money. What GPU would you need to do 4K60 or 1440p120 upscaled on AAA? The B580/4060 tier won't cut it, you need one step up. A 4070 shows up for 650 bucks on my local Amazon. The 4060 Ti for 550. Current gen AMD is more expensive than that.
It's not impossible to build a functional PC around that purchase, but man, you better be a savvy hardware guy or have one on hand. A quick glance shows my local trusted builders will give you a vanilla 8 Gig 4060 paired with an Intel i5 12th gen and 32 gigs of slow-ish DDR4. I mean, you'll play some games, they'll look fine with some tinkering, but that's barely PS5 tier, let alone PS5 Pro. And that's assuming you're plugging that thing into a TV like a bulky, noisy console. Otherwise you're gonna need a monitor to go with it.
Again, not saying it's not an option. Absolutely the right move for a whole bunch of people.
But everybody? Sight unseen? In all circumstances? Yeah, nah. When my little cousin comes asking I'm not just pointing him at the cheapo trashcan PC, I'm asking questions. Do they have a laptop in good nick for work/school? Do they have a decent TV/monitor to use with it? What kinds of games do they want to play? It's not a one-size-fits-all thing the way it was five to ten years ago.
And that includes many PlayStation exclusive games that are currently available on steam
Gentleman, there is a solution here you are not seeing.
Does AMD who makes their APU factor into this at all or is it just greed?