AI boom crushes the console market: PS5 Pro breaks $1,072 as the PS6 gets downgraded

Jacking up the price of a console six years into its lifecycle goes against the traditional deflationary model for gaming hardware. Yet on April 2, 2026, Sony hit the market with a synchronized global price increase across its entire PS5 portfolio. In Europe, the price of the standard model jumped by the equivalent of $117, and the enthusiast tier PS5 Pro now costs a staggering $1,054.

This is not the first time Sony has adjusted prices upward. Back in August 2022, increases were implemented in response to the global economic environment and inflation. The situation is now extreme for Swedish players. A historically weak Krona combined with the country’s weight-based chemical tax means a PS5 Pro can cost up to $1,126 at retail.

AI companies are hoarding your memory

The real cause of this price shock is not Sony itself, but the explosive growth in generative AI. Training massive language models requires massive amounts of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) , which has forced foundry giants like Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron to completely reprioritize their production.

Factory capacity that was previously used to manufacture GDDR6 memory for gaming is now almost exclusively going to AI data centers. As a result, consumer memory prices skyrocketed by 80 to 90 percent in the first quarter of 2026 alone. Sony has been forced to bake this $100 to $150 premium directly into the retail price to protect its profit margins.

The PS6 will suffer

Hardware sales are currently falling sharply, showing a severe 46 percent decline during the fourth quarter of 2025. Despite this, Sony’s gaming division remains highly profitable thanks to the PlayStation Network and digital sales , with operating profit actually rising by 12 percent over the last fiscal year.

The most concerning consequence is how the memory crisis is impacting the PlayStation 6. Since the market is not expected to normalize until 2028, Sony engineers are already being forced into technical downgrades. Leaks indicate that the PS6 architecture is being dropped from a planned 32GB down to just 24GB of VRAM. Furthermore, the memory bus is reportedly being crippled to a 128-bit configuration to keep production costs down.

The era of heavily subsidized consoles with massive generational leaps in performance is effectively over. Gaming on dedicated hardware is rapidly transforming into a pure luxury hobby.