Lawsuit Against Sony Could Give Us Cheaper PS4 and PS5 Games

A class action lawsuithas been filed on behalf of PlayStation Store consumers, outraged by the store's monopolistic policies and its exclusivity to sell digital copies of PlayStation 4 and 5 games, to Sony Interactive Entertainment. At issue is the inability of third-party retailers like Amazon and Walmart to resell game keys. Sony's practices are allegedly unfair to customerswho do not care for collections of boxes on their shelf and prefer to collect their titles virtually, because they have to spend more on them than owners of consoles with optical dribe. What's most interesting is that if the lawsuit is successful, Sony may be forced to abandon the business model it chose in 2019 and thus lower the price of digital games in PlayStation store.

According to the content of the lawsuit, consumers who decide to buy a game in digital version may be paying up to 175% more for the same product than in the case of a physical copy. This may be particularly burdensome for owners of PlayStation 5 console in Digital version, which costs slightly less than its variant with optical drive. This is especially true given that currently some new titles can cost up to a fifth of the console's price. The difference doesn't seem to be that noticeable, though, given the current, vastly inflated prices for the device.

What's more, a similar situation took place some time ago with Sony's decision to close the PlayStation Store for PlayStation 3, Vita and PSP which was received not very positively and the company decided to withdraw part of the plan due to criticism. Nevertheless, the service has been shut down permanently for the PSP device.