2020 has been a strange year. With the global COVID pandemic, it has seemingly caused many things to change. Events have been canceled, games have been delayed, but next generation consoles are still coming whether hell or high water. For a long time, far longer than usual, it seemed like Sony and Microsoft were in a game of endless chicken to see who would blink first about revealing price for their new shiny systems. Microsoft’s price and launch date leaked, leaving Sony to finally reveal their’s earlier today. But, if you believe Jim Ryan, the price was set a long time ago.
Talking to The Washington Post, the PlayStation CEO revealed the somewhat surprising fact that apparently the system’s price point of $499/$399 had been decided “quite early” this year. They wanted to have a PS5 SKU that matched the current PS4 Pro price of $399, which ended up being the Digital Edition. While a lot of factors popped up, namely COVID and, you know, the global collapse of civilization as we know it, those prices held.
So, what exactly was the hold up on revealing the price? Well, that part isn’t detailed. It’s very possible that Sony would have changed that price had Microsoft undercut them significantly, but the Xbox Series X is comparable to the main disc version of the PS5 in price, though the Series S is a full $100 less than the PS5 Digital Edition still. But it’s also possible that would have never happened and Sony just wanted to wait to reveal the price. At this point, I imagine it doesn’t matter.
Both versions of the PS5 are set to launch on November 12th in select regions with the rest of the world getting it on the 19th.