Like so many other consumer electronics companies out there at the moment, Sony is about to be in a lot of trouble thanks to the AI-fuelled rush on computer components like storage and memory. The company's solution, at this stage at least, seems to have come from an evening spent looking at the trolley problem.
As Inside report (via GameSpot), Sony CFO Lin Tao spoke about the company's mitigation plans during their latest financial results presentation, saying that while Sony are "[negotiating] with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers" when it comes to being able to manufacture more PS5 hardware (there's enough to get them through the 2026 holiday season, apparently), they've decided that in order to "minimize the impact" of further console price increases, they're going to really start "monetizing the installed base" across both games and "network services".
That's all she said, but it doesn't take a crystal ball to see what she means: most likely it'll result in stuff like PlayStation Plus price increases and more expensive games (or more games launching at the most expensive price point). I get the impulse; it's probably easier to squeeze each existing customer a little than try to sell a new one a console that, if costs were passed directly onto them, could be $600-700 by Christmas. And I sympathise to some extent with individuals at Sony who are just trying to sell PlayStations and cameras in a world where the deluded impulses of 13 trillionaires are going to drive us all mad.
But also, as a company, Sony can't "we're all trying to find the guy who did this" their way out of this either.
