PlayStation Increases Steam Game Prices in Several Countries - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 May 2023 / 4,181 Views
Sony Interactive Entertainment has increased the price of several of its PlayStation games available on PC via Steam in some countries.
A user on ResetEra first spotted the price increases that have now been verified by VideoGamesChronicle using SteamDB.
God of War, Spider-Man Remastered, Sackboy A Big Adventure, and Returnal are all confirmed to have increased in price on Steam in Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Japan, and South Korea.
How much the price has increased varies by country and game. All four games in Canada have increased by $10 CAD. In Japan, the prices have increased by 29 percent to 32.5 percent.
In Argentina, the prices have increased the most. God of War has gone up from 4,199 pesos to 8,499 Pesos, Spider-Man Remastered doubled in price, while Sackboy A Big Adventure and Returnal increased by 67 percent.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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This is a very strange hill to die on.
Did nintendo died on a hill too for increase prices of zelda for example.
Different situation and scenario bud.
Wasnt one of Sonys complaints to the FTC was that MS will be raising their prices if they own ABK?
Hypocrisy.
MS solved that by rising the price before the approval =p
You mean the price Sony raised first?
Are you talking about the 70USD standard they put on the start of the gen and having nothing to do with any purchase?
They raised prices first before the purchase and continue to raise prices again when they argued to the FTC that MS would raise prices if they brought ABK... so either way someone is raising prices regardless. This is hypocritical as it gets.
Well lets see. Sony was the first to charge 70 bones for their games. Sony was the first to charge for upgrades for their games to PS5. Sony was the first to charge more for their consoles in other different regions and Sony is the first to charge more for their PC games. I would say that Sony is a pretty good example of Hypocrisy. As the market leader it appears Sony has no fear of raising prices. Its pretty clear that Sony has absolutely no fear of MS even though they make a big deal of ABK. I wonder why. Probably because competition means Sony cannot make money moves without consequence like they do today.
First two yes (even if others that said they wouldn't do ended up doing for the price increase).
Charge more in different regions you mean correcting for inflation and exchange ratios that again others said they wouldn't but done (and in case you don't know MS done it even before Sony in India).
Sony raise prices not really because of being market leader but because of inflation/exchange ratio as most other companies do in all markets.
You are continuing to make excuses. Sony whinged to the FTC saying MS will raise prices if they brought ABK, thats a stated fact in court. Meanwhile Sony are raising prices everywhere and have so first. If you cannot see the hypocrisy, than you are blind.
It doesn't matter if they are doing it for inflation or not. What matters is that they did it first and did not care if their competition would not. That is the power of being the clear market leader and dominating platform. Sony can make money moves without fear that the competition does not adjust prices as well. Sony raise prices because they can. In a more competitive situation, they would need to weigh whether or not MS also would raise prices or suffer lost of sales. This is basic business 101. You either can raise or lower prices depending on the market. In certain situations Sony could lower prices to try and undercut MS hoping they cannot compete. This would not really work because MS is a much bigger company. So they raise prices because they are the dominate platform in all regions and know their system will continue to sell. The funny thing is, the more competitive MS is, the better things are for Sony gamers and its funny that most Sony gamers really cannot see this.
The Canadian dollar has been rising relative to the US dollar recently, so including Canada in that list is very strange IMO.
Why would they do this?
Sometimes you have USA with 2% inflation, Brazil 8%, Argentine 100% and Venezuela 8000% in a year.
I know, but there are plenty of other countries with similar inflation to Canada that didn't get a price increase. I just feel like some countries got shafted.
Owww on that I totally agree with you that the shafting is quite selective =p
Yeah, Canada's inflation is one of the lowest around the globe, since our energy prices have hardly budged since this whole thing began, since we're a net exported of every type of energy.
And I do mean every type. Electricity. Oil. Gas. Coal. Uranium. You name it.
Dollar exchange ratio have fluctuated much over there? Because the last big increase Sony made in Canada was because of the exchange rate (I believe because people were likely buying in Canada to use in USA, not that I think Sony should be extra burdening Canada customers because of that, it likely wasn't any significant loss).
The dollar exchange rate did drop, that's true. But it's rising again (in favour of the Canadian dollar), and they didn't make pricing changes in some other markets that dropped as much, and where inflation is higher, so this is still a strange decision IMO.
Very hard to see any company in the world that cuts price because of exchange ratio variation. In Brazil we mocked that gas price when dollar increased would also increase because they would need to pay more to replenish the inventory and when the dollar dropped the price of gas also increased because they needed to prevent devaluation of the inventory or any other excuse they could get away with =p
Video game pricing drops quickly in Canada when the Canadian dollar rises sharply, actually.
A lot of the increase would have to do with Currency exchange rates not just the inflation side and taking Canada in isolation there aren't that many comparable countries once you take away the top five most traded currencies , the question of why just these countries can be answered by many other countries like for example Australia a country that has one of the best OECD inflation outlooks have already been subject to increased pricing , so this is just a continuation of Sony's current gen pricing policy.
A lot of the increase would have to do with Currency exchange rates not just the inflation side and taking Canada in isolation there aren't that many comparable countries once you take away the top five most traded currencies , the question of why just these countries can be answered by many other countries like for example Australia a country that has one of the best OECD inflation outlooks have already been subject to increased pricing , so this is just a continuation of Sony's current gen pricing policy.
The prices of everything doubled in Argentina in one year. I'm sure this measure is just to adjust to inflation. Sucks for Argentinian people though
It is what it is!
It sucks!
That sucks. Would've been nice if there were a warning so I could've bought Spiderman before the price hike.
Currency exchange ratio and inflation is a bitch, but since they aren't new titles these increases seem to much.
Well, I'm going to assume Sony has now officially accepted that the Activision/Blizzard deal is going to be approved and according to them this will kill them so they have to make up for all the lost revenue since, once again according to Sony, everyone that owns a Playstation and COD fan is going to ditch PS5 for Xbox.
Naw, it was always a dumb excuse but then again, it does give PS only gamers someone to hate . Then again since they probably already hate MS not sure if that was a win either.
