Playstation: Sony’s hardware designer Masayasu Ito stops

Sony loses its hardware boss for game consoles: Masayasu Ito retires on October 1, the company announced on Tuesday. The 60-year-old was Vice President of Sony Interactive Entertainment and was responsible for the hardware development of several Playstation consoles.

According to Bloomberg, Ito has worked at Sony since 1986, where he first worked on car audio. Ito is said to have worked in the Japanese company’s console division since 2000, eventually leading development of the Playstation 4 and Playstation 5.

PS5 is getting more expensive

In autumn 2020, Ito presented the hardware of the Playstation 5 to the gaming world in a blog entry: In the post he highlighted, among other things, the layout of the components, the lower volume of the console and the special challenges of the corona pandemic. Ito cannot be seen in an accompanying teardown video, instead his colleague Yasuhiro Ootori demonstrates the PS5 components there.

Sony recently increased the prices for its current game console: the recommended price of the PS5 in Europe will be 50 euros higher than the previous prices. The variant with a drive costs 550 euros, the version without a drive costs 450 euros. Sony justified the controversial step by saying that the price increase was necessary because of global inflation rates and the weak euro.

Sony’s competitors Microsoft and Nintendo, on the other hand, do not want to immediately raise the prices of their game consoles. However, both companies kept the option open to sell their consoles at higher prices in the future. Production costs in the field of consumer electronics have risen in recent months, among other things due to repeated price increases at chip manufacturers such as TSMC.

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