Sony Announces PlayStation 5 ($499) and PS5 Digital Edition ($399) Pricing

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Finally. At the end of this afternoon’s PlayStation 5 Showcase, Sony announced that the PlayStation 5 would be released on November 12 for $499. Its cheaper sibling – the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, which won’t have an optical disc drive – will be available on that same date for $399.

Sony’s pricing puts the standard PlayStation 5 in line with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, which also costs $499. We previously heard rumors that the regular console might cost $599 (or even higher), so the official number seems pretty reasonable. Being that the flagship Xbox console features a faster CPU (3.8 GHz vs. 3.5 GHz), a stronger GPU (12 TFLOPS/1.825 GHz vs. 10.3 TFLOPS/2.23 GHz), and more storage (1 TB vs 825 GB) for the same price, we’d like to say that Microsoft delivered a better deal, but the existence of the $399 Digital Edition, which packs most of the same hardware, complicates things.

Microsoft has definitely trampled Sony in terms of cost of entry for next-generation console gaming, however. As you might recall, the Xbox Series S – the Xbox Series X’s paler, weaker, but perfectly capable sibling – costs only $299. That’s $100 less than Sony’s lowest offering. What’s funny is that this “weaker” console features an 8-core AMD Zen 2 CPU capable of hitting 3.6 GHz. That’s technically faster than the PS5’s processor, which is listed at 3.5 GHz.

PlayStation fanboys will tell you that it’s all about first-party exclusives, while Xbox aficionados will brag about how Microsoft will win this round with brute horsepower and attractive pricing. It’s too early for us to place our bets yet, but it seems safe to say that we’re in for another exciting generation of games.

Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

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