The PlayStation 5 Pro arrives in stores Thursday with a price tag that has raised eyebrows among gamers, but growing sticker shock across the tech industry hasn’t yet deterred consumers.

The upgraded version of Sony’s flagship game console sells for $699.99 in the US; That’s $250 more than the previous PlayStation 5 model.

It will cost an eye-watering 799.99 euros ($860) in Europe, 250 euros more than the old version, and almost 120,000 yen ($780) in Japan, where Sony is based.

“I don’t think I will buy it. I don’t want to spend such amounts to buy a console,” said Hideki Hasegawa, a 45-year-old entrepreneur living in Tokyo.

He recalled a time when consoles cost “no more than 30,000 yen.”

With the launch of PlayStation 5 dated to 2020, the Pro version gives Sony the chance to integrate improvements that make games run faster and with better graphics.

“Simply put, it’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built and a worthy release for the PS5 family,” PlayStation chief architect Mark Cerny said at an event in September.

But JP Morgan analyst Junya Ayada said the high price “seems challenging from a marketing perspective.”

Analysts said Sony failed to boost sales that had weakened in 2016 when it released an upgrade to the PlayStation 4 at a higher cost than the previous version.

– New technologies –

Sony isn’t the only tech company making consumers pay for its latest devices.

“It’s a broadly similar trend across all types of devices, whether it’s phones, video games… AR glasses, smartwatches,” said Jack Leathem, an analyst at Canalys, a firm that analyzes the technology market.

While Apple is keeping the price of the iPhone 16 unchanged from the iPhone 15 when it launches in September, its $799 starting price is much higher than the prices of flagship smartphones from five years ago.

This trend is similar for Apple’s rivals such as Samsung, which has started selling phones with foldable screens such as the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

“These are new entrants to the market that are bringing new technologies, and that often means it comes at a high price,” Brian Comiskey, technology development expert at the Consumer Technology Association, told AFP.

Stating that the increasing prices also reflect the increase in raw material costs, Leathem pointed out that the prices of rare earth minerals such as indium and yttrium have increased.

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into devices has also had an impact.

“These companies need to make a profit,” Leathem said.

“And they have to offset the huge amount of money they’re investing in AI and new technologies by also increasing the price of the device,” he said.

– Installment technology –

However, increasing prices do not seem to dampen consumers’ passion for the latest technology products.

According to figures from Canalys, approximately 310 million smartphones were sold in the first nine months of the year; This figure increased by five percent compared to the same period last year.

According to Josh Lewitz, an analyst at Consumers Intelligence Research Partners, “there’s definitely been some sort of increase in the price that’s possible for a phone.”

But consumers are also keeping their devices longer, and in many markets, including the United States, carriers are offering customers the ability to pay for phones in installments.

“That made the relative price difference less significant,” said Michael Levin, an analyst at Consumers Intelligence Research Partners.

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