Sony plans to 'monetize' existing PS5 gamers as a way to avoid raising console prices

As part of its latest financial results, Sony CFO Lin Tao addressed ongoing concerns about how the company is handling the current memory and storage crisis affecting the consumer market, specifically regarding PlayStation 5 hardware. According to Lin Tao, Sony has already secured the "minimum quantity necessary" for 2026, including the end-of-year holiday season.

And with that, the company will continue to "further negotiate with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers. With over 92 million PlayStation 5 consoles reportedly sold so far, odds are Sony is looking to hit that 100 million figure sooner rather than later. And with that, try to find ways to avoid significant hardware price increases as memory pricing continues to skyrocket.

And with that, Sony's plan to "minimize the impact of the increased memory costs on this segment going forward" is "prioritizing monetization of the installed base." This means passing on the costs to existing PlayStation 5 gamers as opposed to newcomers picking up brand-new consoles.

From a purely financial perspective, this means increasing the revenue and profits for Sony's 'Game and Network Services' segment, which included physical game sales, digital game sales, add-on content like microtransactions, DLC, and Season Passes, and network services like PlayStation Plus. Although Sony didn't detail exactly how it will "monetize" PS5 gamers, the consensus is that the company will likely increase the prices of its PlayStation Plus tiers, much as Microsoft raised the prices of its Xbox Game Pass subscriptions.

Per the same financial report, we learned that PlayStation Network active users also rose to 132 million, which includes PlayStation Plus subscribers, the service required to play PS5 games online.