Sony Expands 'Intelligent Pricing' Push on PlayStation Store
New job listing reveals Sony plans targeted pricing and offers, reigniting concerns about dynamic pricing on its platform.
What to know
- Sony job listings signal expansion of 'intelligent pricing' and targeted offers on PlayStation Store, reviving concerns about dynamic pricing practices.
- The move comes amid consumer frustration over Sony's recent decisions and pricing strategy, with some loyal customers indicating they are reconsidering their platform commitment.
- The conversation reflects a divide: some see regional and behavioral pricing as economically necessary for global markets, while others view it as consumer-unfriendly and dystopian.
The dispute Whether dynamic pricing is a fair, economically justified practice (especially regionally) versus an exploitative tactic that betrays customers locked into Sony's ecosystem. · positions read across 37 posts and comments
Dynamic pricing makes economic sense for regional markets and differentiated customer segments.
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“It happens all of the time with international sales. We had to discount costs at 90% off in Latin America & the South Pacific or there wouldn't be a player base in those regions.”
mailslot · reddit ↗
Sony is prioritizing short-term profit extraction over customer loyalty and goodwill, alienating its base.
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“I actually think they are spending the good will they have way too fast, specially if they plan on pricing the next get at +1000 bucks. People have a limit, both money and patience wise.”
princesoceronte · reddit ↗
Sony Platform operator
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump articlespostscomments
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Gaming community expresses concern over pricing strategy and Sony's direction
Reddit commenters voice dismay over the pricing plans, with some citing accumulated frustration over Sony's recent decisions and questioning whether the company is alienating its customer base faster than building loyalty.
“I actually think they are spending the good will they have way too fast, specially if they plan on pricing the next get at +1000 bucks. People have a limit, both money and patience wise.”
— princesoceronte -
Ok, here's the story. I bought HL2 at the store. Didn't know it came infected with Steam or what it'd do. Besides taking 3 hours to install/DL, it snooped for software and hogged resources. Because broadband was new at the time there were occasional outages. Steam doesn't work offline. My game would not run. Toss in the fact one of their forced…
2 more of the top 3 · 37 posts in this stretch
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It happens all of the time with international sales. We had to discount costs at 90% off in Latin America & the South Pacific or there wouldn’t be a player base in those regions. Games and in-game currency at US rates can be large percentages of a person’s annual income elsewhere. Honestly, the US is large enough that applying pricing by region or…
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I mean, this was immediately apparent upon getting rid of physical games. Get rid of physical games so secondary retailers and re-sellers can no longer undercut prices. Thus establishing a monopoly for those who own your hardware to only be able to buy through you and only be able to gauge price through you (at the individual level). So that you…
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Sony job listing reveals plans for PlayStation Store 'intelligent pricing' expansion
Job postings discovered across multiple gaming news outlets indicate Sony intends to expand its use of "intelligent pricing" and targeted offers on the PlayStation Store, following previous controversial dynamic pricing experiments.
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2 outlets first by psxextreme.com, 14d ago · also Push Square · read ↗
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1 outlet first by PlayStationInfo.de, 14d ago · read ↗
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What people are saying 20 voices from 1 site · best of 37 · verbatim
- Will Sony actually implement different prices for the same customer, or only use targeting for offers and promotions?
- How much of the backlash is about pricing itself versus accumulated frustration with Sony's other recent decisions?
- Oct 31
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I imagine nation states would like to tie this to a social credit system... you follow the party line you get games cheaper, you don't, well everything gets more expensive... Its similar to a system that Islam operates when in majority with non believers paying higher prices than muslims... so eventually non-muslims convert or die off...
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Digital storefronts don’t set the prices of games, the developers or publishers do. They also decide when to put the game on sale and for how much. This “dynamic pricing” (it’s not) is the opt-in for the devs/publishers for Sony to offer an additional 5%-15% off.
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I would say UP to PS4 era. PS3 were the best PS+ days for example, since there was no "needed to play online" bs, so it was games that brought you to. On top of having games avaialable within PS3 and PSV architecture (now you you would have 5 tiers and separete one for PS5, handheld and else). On top being visibly greedy didnt start until PS4 era…
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This isn’t actually dynamic pricing either. It’s additional discounts on top of a discount. So it only happens to games that are already on sale, some people see an additional 5%-15% off and publishers have to opt in to the additional discount since they are the ones that set the base price and discount price.
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They will see that you go for 90% off and then stop showing you that and try 80% and if you buy they will go for 50% and so on until you stop buying and then find the sweet spot thats going to be less than 90% you know... in a dynamic fashion.
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Dynamic Pricing is the practice of increasing the price of goods when demand is high, and lowering them when demand subsides. This PlayStation job position is calling for someone to oversee Targeted Discounts, which is something different. The title is classic ragebait.
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Why would they? Games are not a necessity and people will choose necessities over games especially during hard times. What industry is that? Have you seen prices go up and continue to rise past MSRP with demand in your industry and can you give evidence of it?
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Dynamic Pricing Concerns Revived? Revived? Were they ever dead to anyone with half a brain? Of course they stop physical media to buttfuck you in their own store with dynamic pricing, I think pretty much everyone knew that.
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Yeah, my thought process has been: if I am forced to buy digitally, it might as well be through an open ecosystem that supports all kinds of hardware with much better backward compatibility and much better discounts on games, not to mention mods. So I went from Playstation to Steam. Steam has similar issues with the ownership vs license debate…
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Even that’s the same bullshit in reverse. They can just set the prices at whatever arbitrarily high amount and then offer a bunch of automated codes to get the same result. Dynamic pricing should just be illegal. If there’s a coupon or discount, it should be available to everybody.
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Well not really, a discount model still has an advertised price point that is a fixed starting point. Also I wouldn't consider geographical pricing since that's a complexity of different countries having different economies
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I feel like this description operates under the assumption that dynamic pricing can’t A/B test a higher price. Why couldn’t they? Dynamic pricing says nothing about it having to test LOWER prices. They just aren’t doing it yet for gaming much but companies do test that. I’ve seen it in my industry.
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Yeah they mean that and it's weird like do they think people only play exclusives games? Since it's Reddit, they likely operate from the standpoint of everyone having a gaming PC in addition to their console which is of course extremely far from the truth
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There are several games on the switch that either don't boot up, crash mid game, or take exceptionally long to get past a load screen. Just try playing Lego Incredibles on Switch. You can down vote me, you can pretend I'm talking about stick drift. Whatever.
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Also an owner lf every major console since the NES and I have no idea what you're talking about. They're the best controller I've used probably. The Xbox Series Elite controller, however, is dogshit. For $200 or whatever it was, I expect my bumpers to not break after only like 40 hours of playtime
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Xbox was in this position with the 360 and they did the same with the always online TV TV TV. The difference was this was early in the digital purchase landscape so Sony was able to pick up wins Xbox willing dropped. The market now is different because Sony has had a decade of people games library locked to its platform. And Xbox has nothing to…
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It’s not goalposts. You’re saying Xbox is bad because they don’t use Gyro in their controllers. One feature that isn’t ever discussed by gamers when talking about Xbox. There is a lot wrong with Xbox but you’re the only one complaining that missing Gyro is the reason Xbox is bad.
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Right now Xbox is more flexible platform. You can play their games on pretty much anything. Sony is literally tied to the success of PlayStation hardware and nothing on the cards right now says PS6 is coming in anything less than $1000. Even titles that would be considered system sellers like Phantom Blade is already on Steam. They see the writing…
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Nobody was comparing S2 to next Gen. You tried to make a snide remark saying the dont have a home console when they do. Its ALSO a CURRENT gen handheld. Tell me more about how PS5 doesn't struggle with framerates and is never capped at 30fps. Go back to grock and get your useless info.
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I’ll be honest, games on the psn, website logged in Nd website logged off all had the same price and I bought 20 and then 25 a month later. I haven’t seen any changed prices, if anything, I think they offer lower than normal prices to certain people with big purchasing history. It’s like giving loyal customers an exclusive coupon. As a new…