PlayStation Store's Black Friday sale went live today, and players are already seeing different prices for the exact same games on different accounts. Astro Bot and Death Stranding 2 are a few dollars apart depending on who's logged in, and Sony still isn't saying why. Here's every price, the full sale schedule, and how this test has grown over the past year.
PlayStation Store’s Black Friday sale is less than a day old, and it already has a problem: two people can open the same deal and see two different prices.
Deals account Cheap Ass Gamer (@videogamedeals) flagged it this morning, posting that Astro Bot on PS5 is “$33.59 or $39.59 via PSN. Price Depends on Your Account (Dynamic Pricing).” It found the same split on Death Stranding 2: On the Beach, at $34.29 on one account and $39.89 on another. Push Square picked it up this afternoon and says Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition is affected too. All three are Sony first-party games.
Price Depends on Your Account (Dynamic Pricing).
Sony has not commented on why some accounts get a better deal than others.
What you need to know
- What’s happening: during the same Black Friday sale, in the same region, some PlayStation accounts are offered a deeper discount on the same game than others.
- Games spotted so far: Astro Bot, Death Stranding 2: On the Beach and Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition (all PS5, all first-party).
- The gap: about $5 to $6 per game in the examples so far.
- Why: unknown. Sony has not explained how the prices are picked or who gets the lower one.
- Is it new? No. Players have been catching split prices on the PlayStation Store for about a year. What’s new is that it’s now hitting the biggest sale of the year.
The prices, side by side
Using the original prices listed on the store screenshots, as broken down by TalkEsport:
- Astro Bot (PS5): $39.59 (34% off $59.99) on one account, $33.59 (44% off) on another. That’s a $6.00 gap.
- Death Stranding 2: On the Beach (PS5): $39.89 (43% off $69.99) on one account, $34.29 (51% off) on another. That’s a $5.60 gap.
- Horizon Forbidden West Complete Edition (PS5): affected per Push Square. Exact prices not yet shared.
The Astro Bot listing shows the offer ending November 21 at 1:59 AM Central, which lines up with Sony’s November 20, 11:59 PM PST cutoff for deals that leave the sale early.
The PlayStation Black Friday sale schedule
From Sony’s own PlayStation Blog post by Promotions Proposal Manager Zack Garvey:
- Started: Wednesday, November 4 at 12:00 AM PST (3:00 AM ET).
- Discounts: up to 75% off “thousands of PS5, PS4 and PS VR2 games, expansions, and DLC.”
- New titles join: November 16 at 12:00 AM PST (3:00 AM ET).
- Some deals end early: November 20 at 11:59 PM PST (November 21, 2:59 AM ET).
- Sale ends: November 30 at 11:59 PM PST (December 1, 2:59 AM ET).
The fine print says the “Promotion and percentage discount may differ by region.” It says nothing about prices changing from one account to the next inside the same region, which is exactly what players are seeing.
How we got here
This didn’t start today. Here’s the timeline:
- November 2025: Push Square reported Reddit users seeing Red Dead Redemption 2: Ultimate Edition at $19.99 on one account and $14.99 on a partner’s account.
- March 2026: price tracker PSPrices said it found experiment labels like “IPT_PILOT” in PlayStation Store data. TheSixthAxis and Kotaku also highlighted a UK case where Assassin’s Creed Unity was £3.74 signed out but £9.99 on a signed-in account.
- Spring 2026: the test reached the US. Per Push Square, Astro Bot showed $39.59 for one shopper and $26.99 for another during a spring sale. That $39.59 is the same higher price one account sees this week.
- Since then: PSPrices says the test has grown to more than 190 games in over 70 regions, including the US, with alternate discounts of up to 27.8%.
- October 2026: Sony posted a job listing for a Senior Director, Digital Games Monetization, paying $251,000 to $376,600 a year, with “driving the adoption and evolution of Intelligent Pricing” and “expanding the impact of the Targeted Offers program” as key duties. We broke that down on October 29.
Is it a PS Plus thing?
Nobody knows for sure. TalkEsport spotted one clue in the Death Stranding 2 screenshots: on the account seeing $39.89, the game trial banner asks the player to subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, while the $34.29 account is asked to upgrade instead. That hints the cheaper account already has a lower PS Plus tier. It’s a theory, not a confirmed explanation, and Sony hasn’t said either way.
So far, the reports mostly show some players getting a deeper discount than the standard sale price, not prices going above it. The problem is nobody can see which group they’re in until they compare with someone else.
Different prices for the same game in the same sale. Fair?
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How players are taking it
Not well. Pirat_Nation’s post on the split prices passed 700 likes and 35,000 views within a few hours this afternoon.
In Push Square’s comments, players called for Sony to be upfront about it, with one asking that stores have to “say someone else is getting a better deal and why.” Others said they’ll hold off buying and compare prices across accounts first, and a few said they’re done buying digital on the PlayStation Store.
OnPoint’s take: A sale price should be the sale price. Period. Black Friday is the one week a year people are told “this is the deal,” and Sony is quietly handing some players a better one than others with zero explanation. Same game, same store, same day, and you just have to hope you got picked. That’s not a deal, that’s a guessing game.
And look at the pattern here. Sony is hiring a director at up to $376K to grow “Intelligent Pricing,” and the test keeps spreading, now right into the biggest shopping window of the year. Xbox’s own Black Friday sale is expected to kick off November 19 based on early leaks, and our advice for Xbox fans is simple: check the deal, grab the deal, done. PlayStation players, if you’re tired of wondering whether your neighbor paid six bucks less for Astro Bot, you know where we are. Join this side.
Image: OnPoint 4 Gamers
Sources
- Cheap Ass Gamer on X: Astro Bot price split
- Cheap Ass Gamer on X: Death Stranding 2 price split
- Push Square: PS5 Dynamic Pricing Impacts New PS Store Black Friday Offers
- TalkEsport: PS Store Black Friday Dynamic Pricing
- PlayStation Blog: PlayStation Store’s Black Friday Deals 2026
- PSPrices: Sony is testing dynamic pricing in the PlayStation Store
- Pirat_Nation on X
- Related: OnPoint 4 Gamers, Oct 29, Sony Is Hiring a $376K Director to Push “Intelligent Pricing” on the PlayStation Store
