We finally have a release date and price for Sony‘s new console, the PlayStation 5.
The reveal came at the end of a 45 minute major presentation highlighting a number of exclusive titles including Final Fantasy XVI, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and God of War 5.
So, when is the PlayStation 5 coming out and how much will it cost?
The PlayStation 5 will cost $499.99, matching the price of Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
Meanwhile, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will cost $399.99, which is $100 more than the Xbox Series S, which will retail for $299.
The console’s release date is interesting, as it will be staggered, with certain countries getting their hands on it first.
The PlayStation 5 releases on November 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
The rest of the world will be able to get the PlayStation 5 on November 19, just one week later.
However, we did not get any word on when pre-orders will be made available. Recently, Sony announced that it was allowing fans to register for the opportunity to get a pre-order, which rattled a lot of people.
Xbox Series X and Series S preorders go online on September 22, which is next week. It is unknown at the time of this writing whether Sony will allow preorders through retail locations or whether they will be controlling all of the preorders internally.
Gamers have been waiting for months to get this information. Since the console was first announced, we have had nothing more than a vague “Holiday 2020” release date. Now, with an official price and timeframe, the console wars for the 2020 Holiday season have officially kicked off.
It was rumored that the PlayStation 5 would cost $599.99 at release, but Sony had to kick that down to compete with Microsoft’s pricing. There’s no word on whether those rumors were true, and it is unlikely that we will ever know for sure.
It’s not like Sony is going to advertise wanting to charge us more and then panicking at a competitor’s price point.
The staggered release is also not super shocking. A recent YouTube video that was later pulled talked about the North American release date as compared to the rest of the world’s release date. However, what was originally rumored to be just the US, Mexico, and Canada was expanded to include Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand.
With two evenly priced consoles being released during a Holiday season where many people are hurting financially from a struggling global economy, it will be interesting to see who takes the early advantage in this console generation.