It seems Sony has been experimenting with dynamic pricing across the PlayStation Store, apparently since as early as November of last year, targeting discounts to specific player regions. This is according to the website PSPrices, which has closely tracked trends in Sony’s pricing over time, and it recently reported an increase in the number of games undergoing dynamic pricing.
In 68 regions and across 139 games, including first-party AAA titles like God of War, Spider-Man, HELLDIVERS 2, and Stellar Blade, Sony offered average discounts ranging from just over 5 percent at the low end to nearly 18 percent at the high end. PSPrices even discovered that personalized discounts were being offered, with some lucky accounts receiving a massive 56 percent off the regular price of the popular Helldivers 2 game.
Currently, both the United States and Japan are exempt from the experiment, likely due to stricter market regulations, but that still means that millions of customers in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa
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If Sony embraces dynamic pricing across the board, it may also seek to selectively raise prices on its most popular or in-demand titles, a practice known as “surge pricing.” Furthermore, learning that one player in a gaming lobby paid full price for a game while another player from a different country received a 50 percent discount may not sit well with some gamers, and is likely to provoke some backlash if or when the dynamic pricing policy becomes standard store-wide.
As of this writing, Sony has not publicly commented on the experiment. At a time of economic uncertainty and general consumer anxiety, gaming companies have faced heightened scrutiny over their pricing, so it will be interesting to see whether they move forward with dynamic pricing.
Topics
PlayStation
Video Games
