SanDisk has revealed the pricing for its new line of ‘officially-licensed’ PlayStation 5 SSDs, with the top-of-the-range model costing nearly $3,000.
The storage firm announced its Optimus GX PRO range on Tuesday, which drops the WD_Black branding and offers up to 8TB of storage on an “officially licensed drive for the PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Pro consoles.”
Unsurprisingly, it’s the SSD range’s pricing that has caught the most attention, with the 8TB model costing $2,960 USD (which, according to SanDisk, is discounted from $3,700), and even the 2TB retailing for over $100 more than a base PlayStation 5 console.
A 1TB model retails for $380, a 2TB model for $760, and a 4TB model for $1500.
The pricing again highlights the global surge in component prices, driven by demand for AI datacentres and forcing most consumer electronics companies to raise their product prices drastically.
As noted by PC Part Picker, a near-identical 8GB SSD drive from SanDisk would have cost around $640 less than a year ago, representing a 370% increase in price.
In March, Sony raised the price of all PS5 models by at least $100, and Xbox’s CEO recently claimed that it was facing a four-times-increase in the cost of components to build its consoles.
The PS5 price increases, which Sony blames on the “global economic landscape”, mean that the price of the cheapest Digital Edition console has swollen by 50% ($200 / £200) since the platform launched in 2020.
Microsoft raised the prices of its Xbox consoles twice last year. A standard Xbox Series X console now retails for $649.99, up $150 since launch, and the cheaper Series S sells for $399.99, an increase of $100.
The global economic situation has placed further pressure on game console manufacturers, which have historically reduced prices over time. At this stage of PlayStation 4’s lifecycle, the console retailed for as little as $200.
Earlier this month, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma called the situation a “crisis”.
“When I joined as CEO in February, the price we paid for console storage components was over 2x as high as we paid last fall. These costs have since doubled again. And as we plan for the 2027 holiday season, we expect another significant increase, taking us over 5x the prices we paid only two years earlier.
“Memory costs have followed a broadly similar trajectory. While the entire industry is facing a components crisis, we believe we have been impacted more greatly than many of our peers due to the choices we made over the last half decade. We are currently unable to make as many consoles as players want to buy, and we need a new business model and partnerships for hardware as we remain committed to Helix.”
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