Sony Announces Japan-Only PS5 Digital Edition for ¥55,000 ($357) - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 11 November 2025 / 5,413 Views
Sony during today's PlayStation State of Play Japan announced it will be releasing a PlayStation 5 Digital Edition that is exclusive to Japan that will only be able to play Japanese games on November 21.
The "PS5 Digital Edition Japanese Only" will be priced at ¥55,000 ($357 USD). This is a discount of ¥17,980 ($117 USD) over the regular PS5 Digital Edition.
The standard PS5 Digital Edition is currently priced at ¥72,980 ($473 USD) as it has seen a few price increases since it first launched in November 2020. It was first priced at ¥39,980 ($259 USD) in Japan, then it increased to ¥59,980 ($389 USD), then again last year to ¥72,980 ($473 USD).
The "PS5 Digital Edition Japanese Only" comes with an 825GB SSD and can play downloadable PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 games available from the PlayStation Store in Japan. A disc drive can be purchased separately that lets you play physical games.
Only PlayStation accounts wit the console language set to Japanese and the Country/Region to Japan can use the PS5 Digital Edition Japanese Only."
Pre-orders for the console will open on November 13 at PlayStation dealers and e-commerce sites in Japan.
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 follow the author on Bluesky.
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I can see it working out for Sony in Japan.
That could come along with a significant bump in hardware sales.
Interesting rumor turned truth. Switch 2 gave them ideas it seems
As always, Sony copying Nintendo
Is the logic here to remove the global appeal for resellers thus keeping the low price?
Why if its available in china
It's probably cheaper due to the depreciation of the yen.
So I imagine you can still use the plug disc thing to play physical games, anyway this will boost also the phasing out of physical games.
Good idea but sadly it's too little too late. In Japan Switch/Switch 2 is doing to PS what PS did to Xbox worldwide
This price drop for the PlayStation is not intended to compete with Nintendo, but rather to boost sales in Japan. It is also a way to test the market in view of the future PS6.
I know they're not competing with Nintendo, but they're still getting phased out of the Japanese market regardless of competition.
The Japanese chat was all about 'why? Most games are on PC or switch' the system will sell but it misses it's true potential with more high profile games only on PS5.
Don't think it has that much to do with the Switch/Switch 2. PS4 was selling slow even when its competition was the WiiU. Home consoles are just dead in Japan, has been trending that way for a while. It's why the Vita somehow managed to sell almost 6m in Japan while being completely dead globally. Or the 3DS selling over double the Wii despite the Wii being more popular globally.
Even during the PS3/PSP era, PSP outsold PS3 2:1 in Japan. In the top 10 selling consoles in Japan, 4 of them are strictly home consoles, but every one of those was released over 25 years ago. In modern Japan handheld is king.
Yeah, but Sony only has traditional consoles. So, by default of only having trad console as only option is getting themselves phased out of Japan and now it might be too late to get back into the market with a handheld. I don't think Sony cares that much though cos they got the rest of the world
It's not a zero-sum contest. The launch of the Switch 2 had no more effect on the PS5 than the launch of the Switch 1 did on the PS4, which is to say "zero" (in fact, the PS4 was having some of its best sales ever in Japan in 2017-18).
If you look at PS5 sales in Japan, there wasn't some crash that coincided with the launch of the Switch 2. It's been doing about the same as it was earlier in the year before the Switch 2 released. Rather, it started having problems selling well (by PS standards in Japan) after the price increase back in September of last year. Prior to said increase it was averaging 20-30k/week, but ever since the price increase it's been averaging less than half that outside of holidays and the bump it got from Monster Hunter Wilds. While the PS5 was managing a decent lead over the PS4 in Japan up through Aug. 2024, that lead has been quickly eroded since the price increase, and not it's slightly trailing the PS4.
TL;DR: Price increases are bad for sales in the same way price drops are good for sales.
Price increases didn't really effect them anywhere else though and we can attribute that to the increased competition. in Japan
The decline started literally the same week the price increase went into affect, and that was nine whole months before the Switch 2 was released, and four months before it was even officially announced. We have a far more obvious case of clear cause-and-effect here with the price increase than with the release of the Switch 2.
We never got NPD/Circana estimates for August & September because Mat Piscatella elected to not divulge information needed to make said estimates, so we don't have better estimates for the PS5 in light of its price cut, but we do know that the XBS experienced a huge drop after the first big price increase of this year. It was already in bad enough shape during the 2024 holidays and on through the start of this year, but it got far worse after the price increase. Sales in May were down 40% from April, which is far beyond any sort of normal April-to-May change. Sales for May through July are the worst sales ever for Xbox in the U.S. during the generation proper aside from stock outages in 2020. Who knows how bad they've gotten since the most recent price hike?
So yeah, price increases bad.
So there was never a digital version prior?
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