SONY has been accused of “pure greed” after gamers spotted that the tech giant has quietly downgraded a popular PS5 model.
And what’s really infuriated people is that the price hasn’t been reduced as a result.
Shoppers noticed something different about the latest PS5 Slim models for sale[/caption]
A tweaked PS5 Slim build (officially known as CFI-210) has started popping up on online stores which is largely the same as the first version launched in November 2023.
However, eagle-eyed shoppers have noticed that the console now comes with a lot less game storage.
The PS5 Slim Digital Edition launched with a much-welcome 1TB of internal storage – an increase on the 825GB found on the original PS5s.
But it appears Sony has downgraded the PS5 Slim storage size, going back to 825GB.
While it won’t make any difference to performance, it does mean buyers will have less space to save their games locally.
So far, the change has only been found on PS5s being sold in some regions, such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
There’s currently no change to the UK or US versions for sale, so it’s unclear whether it’ll roll out globally.
But in countries where it has dropped, the price remains unchanged at 499.99 euros, leading to accusations of “shrinkflation”.
“Shrinkflation on a 5 years old 500 euros piece of hardware,” one person wrote on Reddit.
“Storage is getting cheaper. Unless its a better quality SSD this is pure greed,” another user raged.
“So we had three price increases and now get even less hardware?” a third gamer commented.
If you’ve been mulling over buying a PS5 Slim Digital Edition, now might be a good time to avoid potentially losing out on storage.
Unless you’re waiting out for the PS6 of course.
Sony hasn’t announced anything official about the next generation console but rumours suggest it could come in 2027.
Previous release date trends show a six to seven year gap between major console releases which would align with 2027 perfectly.
Here’s a list of PlayStation release dates, along with the days of the week that they launched on:
- PlayStation – Saturday, December 3, 1994 (1st Saturday)
- PS One – Friday, July 7, 2000 (1st Friday)
- PlayStation 2 – Saturday, March 4, 2000 (1st Saturday)
- PS2 Slimline – Friday, October 29, 2004 (5th Friday)
- PlayStation 3 – Saturday, November 11, 2006 (2nd Saturday)
- PS3 Slim – Thursday, August 27, 2009 (4th Thursday)
- PS3 Super Slim – Tuesday, September 25, 2012 (4th Tuesday)
- PlayStation 4 – Friday, November 15, 2013 (3rd Friday)
- PS4 Slim – Thursday, September 15, 2016 (3rd Thursday)
- PS4 Pro – Thursday, November 10, 2016 (2nd Thursday)
- PlayStation 5 – Thursday, November 12, 2020 (2nd Thursday)
- PS5 Slim – Friday, November 10, 2023 (2nd Friday)
What is shrinkflation?
Shrinkflation is when products shrink in size but remain at the same price, meaning shoppers pay the same for less.
It’s a tactic often used by companies to avoid hiking prices, as a change if size is less noticeable.
This tends to happen more with food products like chocolate.
Image credit: Getty
