Sony lowers price of PS4 to $350 in the US starting Friday
John Koller / PlayStation.Blog :
Context & Ripple Effects
The price cut is Sony's answer to Microsoft's holiday push: after the Xbox One led December US console sales and dropped back to $349, Sony is bringing the PS4 down to $350 just ahead of the 2015 shopping season. John Koller announced it on PlayStation.Blog, keeping the two consoles within a dollar of each other.
The move also sets up the platform's next chapter — within a year Sony would layer on the $399 PlayStation 4 Pro with 4K support, letting old hardware keep playing new games while the base unit became the entry price.
First-order effects
- US buyers get a $50-cheaper PS4 from Friday, and Sony erases Microsoft's sub-$350 Xbox One price advantage going into the holidays.
- Microsoft's $349 Xbox One positioning, which drove its December US lead, no longer offers a meaningful discount over the PS4.
Second-order effects
- Retailers gain a matched pair of sub-$350 consoles heading into Q4, shifting competition from sticker price toward bundles, exclusives, and attach-rate on games and accessories.
- A cheaper installed base raises the stakes for Sony's software and peripheral revenue, the margin pool that carried through to premium add-ons like PS4 Pro.
Third-order effects
- If this cycle repeats, mid-generation becomes a two-tier market — a discounted base unit feeding an upsell path to pricier refreshed hardware — a playbook Sony ran again with the PSVR2's later price cut to $400 to widen its accessory funnel.
- Price direction tracks the generation's age: aggressive cuts like this one sit opposite Sony's 2025 decision to raise PS5 prices by $50 in the US, suggesting hardware discounts are a maturity-stage lever rather than a permanent norm.
The trend: Console makers use price cuts to defend share late in a generation's growth phase, then pivot to premium tiers and, eventually, price increases once the installed base is locked in.