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Glib Scaremongering Re: PlayStation Pricing

A spate of reports came out today, scaremongering that Sony intends to raise PS Plus or game prices to offset rising memory costs. Anyone who actually reads the financial report (image 1 below) and FAQ transcripts (images 2-3), however, can see that the plan is to prioritize software and services over hardware sales.

Excerpt from Sony Q3 FY2025 Consolidated Financial Results: Given the stage of our console cycle, our hardware sales strategy can be adjusted flexibly, and we intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory costs on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the installed base to date and striving to further expand our software and network services revenue.
Excerpt from Sony FY2025.Q3 Earnings Announcement Q&A: A: We will provide information about the impact on next fiscal year's financial results at the appropriate time. PS5 is now in its sixth year since its launch, has an installed base of 92 million units on a sell-in basis, and has created a very healthy ecosystem. As is the case this fiscal year, the majority of our sales for next fiscal year and beyond is expected to come from software sales and network services, which will not be affected by memory prices. Although rising costs of memory procurement will have a certain impact on sales of new PS hardware, we had originally anticipated a relatively gradual decline in hardware unit sales in the latter half of the lifecycle, so we believe that our available options are relatively broad.
Excerpt from Sony FY2025.Q3 Earnings Announcement Q&A: A: We are currently in the second year of the Mid-Range Plan and our performance is progressing steadily. We understand the market's concerns regarding rising memory prices. However, the momentum of our business is strong, and we plan to manage the increase in memory prices while operating our businesses with a strong focus on profitability going forward. Our confidence in achieving the Mid-Range Plan targets differs by business, but for example, in the G&NS and Pictures segments, the title lineup for next fiscal year is strong, so we view these areas positively and plan to provide further the details at the year end earnings announcement.

Since the PS5 console being in its 6th year doesn’t have much room left to grow (images below by Luminoth 4545), Sony is just reassuring the investors that the memory costs won’t affect G&NS revenue much.

Table of PS5 quarterly hardware shipments, from Q3 FY2020/21 to Q3 FY2025/26; the latest total being 92.20 million
Table of PS4 quarterly hardware shipments, from Q3 FY2013/14 to Q4 FY2021/22; the total being 117.20 million

Not only is this a nothing burger, outlets that didn’t bother to read the IR materials in the preceding 13 days (available since 2/5) are just now copying each other’s homework to glibly concern-troll. Take Aftermath for example (images below), to maximize the scare factor they stooped to putting quotation marks around “network services” of G&NS to imply machinations—that’s just their name! What are we even doing here?

Screenshot of Aftermath article: PlayStation Is Gonna Screw All Of Us A Little, Instead Of Some Of Us A Lot The company's solution seems to have come from an evening spent looking at the trolley problem
Screenshot of the Aftermath article: As Inside report (via GameSpot), Sony CFO Lin Tao spoke about the company's mitigation plans during their latest financial results presentation, saying that while Sony are "[negotiating] with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers" when it comes to being able to manufacture more PS5 hardware (there's enough to get them through the 2026 holiday season, apparently), they've decided that in order to "minimize the impact" of further console price increases, they're going to really start "monetizing the installed base" across both games and "network services".

[Originally posted on 2026-02-18 Pacific Time]