Dynamic Pricing Appears To Be Hitting The US PlayStation Store

As if PS5 price increases were not enough, dynamic pricing appears to be hitting the US PlayStation store. 

The dynamic pricing is incredibly annoying for consumers, but there doesn’t seem to be anything to stop it. The pricing means that players could see one price, while their friend or second account could see a totally different price. Heck this could go as far as price changing based on the time of day you logged in. 

What is taken into account to adjust the prices is unclear at the moment, but certain aspects could be considered which could potentially include game time, last time logged into the store, last purchase, and shown interests or likelihood of buying a game. After all, all this data needs to be put to use, right? 

Well it appears to be hitting the US PlayStation Store now. Before today it was only in a testing phase and in select regions, where it was not widely accepted at all. A majority of gamers dislike the concept entirely, and perhaps the only ones in support of it are the ones lucky enough to get the sweet deals. 

It became evident when a deal scavenging social post, Cheap Ass Gamer, noted that Astro Bot was on sale for $26.99. Gamers were quickly to chime in that they were not seeing that price at all, and instead were seeing a $39.59 price. 

The page then clarified after investigating that the dynamic pricing was indeed impacting the sale. Some users were seeing a 34 percent discount, while others saw a 55 percent discount. 

Reading the comments, people are posting prices of various titles and another title with a varied price tag appears to be Stellar Blade. Showing up as $39.89 on normal discount, while some users are reporting a steeper discount of $20.99, a clean 70 percent off.

It appears that games that have this dynamic pricing have an initial odd number discount. Looking through the current Spring sale on PS5, games typically have a discount that ends in .99 cents, but all the games that have the dynamic pricing appear to end in .59 or .89 for example. This could potentially mean there is some internal computer made percentage being taken off on various tiers of users, instead of manually updating the price.

After looking into it myself, the only variable I can find is the length of  time since last purchase. Both accounts I have that recently made a purchase see the normal price, while an account with no PS Plus attached and no recent purchases see’s the lower pricing point. Users are also reporting they own these titles physically, with trophies attached, and may or may not see discounts too, so it doesn’t appear to be tied to data revolving around games played.