While Japan is slowly getting used to the idea of things costing more, it’s mostly in fits and starts. The price of entertainment, in particular, has been remarkably stable: The cost of a movie ticket has risen just 11 per cent in the more than 21 years I’ve lived here. Other electronics, such as top-end televisions, get cheaper and better every year.
INFLATION AND A WEAK YEN
To be fair, it’s not just Sony. The PS5 announcement came the day after a sticker shock that has become more predictable: Apple’s reveal of its new iPhones. While the US firm likes to boast about keeping the price of an iPhone Pro at US$999 for seven years running, in that time the price in Japan has soared 40 per cent due to Apple’s habit of repricing each year based on the currency.
The yen giveth and the yen taketh away. In the days of strong currency, iPhones and other Apple products were a bargain in Japan.
Imported devices are one thing. When the pain in one’s wallet comes not just from a Japanese product, but from one of the country’s most famous brands, it feels more like a kick in the teeth. “PlayStation” is, for a certain generation, practically synonymous with “Japan”. But it’s been clear for some time that its home market is low on Sony’s priority list.
Due to the weak yen, the standard PS5 has seen three price hikes in Japan since 2020, even though players are used to price cuts as components age and demand wanes. The announcement of the Pro dropped at midnight in the country, in a video that was all in English, with Japanese subtitles only provided later.
Perhaps most damningly, the PS5 ended a quarter-century tradition in which the controller’s iconic X and O buttons behaved differently than the rest of the world. Japan bent to the global standard of using X for “confirm” and O for “cancel,” even though the concept there of X meaning “no, bad, quit” and O being “yes, good, accept” is deeply ingrained.
