A new PlayStation job listing has sparked a fresh wave of fan concerns regarding dynamic pricing on the PS Store.
Spotted by The Game Post, the role – for a Senior Director of Digital Games Monetisation – includes some phrases which have spooked gamers, including a reference to “intelligent pricing”.
According to the listing, candidates will be responsible for maximising “the commercial performance of publisher content”.
Responsibilities will include “driving the adoption and evolution of intelligent pricing, expanding the impact of the targeted offers program, and accelerating the development of future monetisation capabilities across the store”.
While the blurb is vague, fans are concerned this may signal Sony’s intent to double down on its dynamic pricing experiment from earlier in the year.
For those of you who missed the story, the platform holder was caught offering targeted discounts to select users, without clarifying exactly who was eligible for the best promotions and why.
It’s important to underline that there was no example of prices increasing; it was more a case of some users getting deeper discounts than others.
The theory is that, as Sony learns more about its players, it can use dynamic pricing to trigger certain actions on its storefront.
However, many fans understandably feel this is unfair. It doesn’t feel right to be offered a worse deal than someone else, with no real transparency on why.
This all comes at a time when the Japanese giant is under intense scrutiny for signalling its intention to cease making physical games in 2028, forcing fans to use its storefront without any option to shop elsewhere.
In my opinion, the job listing is far too vague to trigger anger right now, but I hope Sony thinks long and hard about this.
If it really is going to implement dynamic pricing more widely, then at the very least it has to be transparent about who’s getting the best deals and why.
