There’s no two ways about it: Sony is testing dynamic pricing on the PS Store, and we’ve seen evidence of it ourselves.
For those who aren’t aware, this works by adjusting the price of PS5 titles on a per user basis. So, a power user in one country may see a different discount to a casual player in another.
The best example of this right now is Assassin’s Creed Unity – a game many may want to buy after its recent 60fps update – which for some shows a price of £3.74 (~$4.99) in the UK when logged out. That increases to £9.99 (~$13.34) when logged in.
According to PS Prices’ research, this A/B testing is currently occurring across around 139 games in roughly 68 different countries. The US is, currently, excluded from the experiment.
Many have questioned the legality of this practice, but UK consumer law concludes this is allowed, as long as the retailer is transparent.
The manufacturer has recently included all kinds of disclaimers on the PS Store, demonstrating the lowest price in the past 30 days et al. While this was originally assumed a pro-consumer move, it may actually be a consequence of it introducing this model.
Fans are understandably disgusted by the experiment, and irate at the idea they could be receiving worse deals on select games for reasons not explicitly explained by the platform holder.
“This is absolutely ridiculous and extremely scummy,” one Push Square poster fumed. “Shame on Sony. I’ll be buying even less digital games than I already do.”
Despite requests for comment, the company has yet to make a statement on this practice. It’s possible, once it’s gathered the data it needs, it’ll quietly phase it out like it never happened.
But there’s also an understandable concern among fans that if this is having the desired outcome – i.e. making the Japanese giant more money – then it could extend the concept across more games in more countries.
It doesn’t seem fair to us.
Demand or supply issues don’t affect digital games, therefore it’s not clear how the manufacturer is determining who gets which promotions and why.
While we’re not keen on the dynamic pricing model adopted by, say, the hotel industry – it does make sense for prices to adjust depending on the time of year or what’s happening in a particular city on a certain date.
None of this applies to the PS Store, and the lack of transparency from Sony only exacerbates the issue.
We think fans are right to be frustrated, and we’ll be monitoring this situation closely over the coming months.