PlayStation Store’s Black Friday sale is barely a day old, and some PS5 owners are already finding out that the discount on their screen is not the one their friends are getting.
Screenshots from players’ accounts, shared on X by Pirat_Nation on 4 November, show Astro Bot and Death Stranding 2: On the Beach selling at clearly different prices on different accounts during the same promotion. The pattern has surfaced in earlier sales over the past year, but its return for Black Friday, the busiest shopping window on the calendar, means far more buyers are likely to run into it.
Astro Bot and Death Stranding 2 prices sit up to $6 apart
On one account, Astro Bot is listed at $39.59, which is 34% off its $59.99 original price, while a second account shows the same standard edition at $33.59, a much deeper 44% discount. Death Stranding 2: On the Beach follows the same pattern. One account sees $39.89, or 43% off $69.99, while another sees $34.29 at 51% off, which leaves a $5.60 gap for an identical digital copy.
Deals account CAG, which posts on X as @videogamedeals, flagged the same Astro Bot split earlier that day, adding a blunt note that the price depends on your account. The timing in the screenshots also lines up with Sony’s own schedule. The Astro Bot listing says the offer ends on 21 November at 1:59am Central time, which matches the 20 November, 23:59 PST cut-off Sony set for deals that leave early.
Sony’s official PlayStation Blog post, written by Promotions Proposal Manager Zack Garvey, says the Black Friday Deals began on 4 November with up to 75% off thousands of PS5, PS4 and PS VR2 games. The promotion refreshes with new titles on 16 November and runs until 30 November. Astro Bot even appears in the blog’s own preview of discounted games, and our full PlayStation Black Friday 2026 games list covers the rest of the sale. Sony’s small print warns that the promotion and its percentage discounts may differ by region. However, it says nothing about prices changing from one account to another inside the same region, which is exactly what these players are describing.
Sony has been testing account-based discounts for a year
This Black Friday gap is the latest chapter in a story that goes back to at least November 2025. That month, 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. In March 2026, price tracker PSPrices said it had found experiment labels such as IPT_PILOT in PlayStation Store data.
By its count, the test had grown from about 50 games in 30 regions to more than 150 games across roughly 70 regions. TheSixthAxis, Tom’s Hardware, Video Games Chronicle and TechRadar all reported those findings within a few days, and Newsweek said it had contacted PlayStation for comment, although no official response appeared in that coverage. Most of those reports described deeper discounts for a chosen group rather than outright price rises. Even so, TheSixthAxis and Kotaku both highlighted a UK case where Assassin’s Creed Unity cost £3.74 signed out and £9.99 on a signed-in account.
The experiment then reached the US by late March. Push Square, citing the same CAG deals account, reported Astro Bot at $39.59 for one shopper and $26.99 for another during the Spring Sale. That higher figure is exactly the price one account sees this week.
Sony’s own hiring plans point in the same direction. A current PlayStation job listing for a Senior Director, Digital Games Monetization, based in San Mateo, names one key accountability in plain terms. That accountability is “driving the adoption and evolution of Intelligent Pricing, expanding the impact of the Targeted Offers program and accelerating the development of future monetization capabilities across the Store.”
Could PS Plus explain part of the Death Stranding 2 gap?
The screenshots themselves offer one useful clue on Death Stranding 2. On the account paying $39.89, the game trial banner asks the player to subscribe to PlayStation Plus Premium, whereas the $34.29 account is asked to upgrade instead. That wording suggests the cheaper account already holds a lower PS Plus tier, which would make a membership perk a plausible part of the story. Nevertheless, it remains an unconfirmed explanation rather than an established one.
Neither price carries a PS Plus label in the screenshots, and the Astro Bot images show no membership details at all. Sony’s Black Friday post does not mention extra discounts for PS Plus members either. Sony had not commented publicly at the time of writing. It has also not publicly explained how its earlier experiments decide which accounts receive the better price, so shoppers are left guessing whether their deal is the best one.
Microsoft has been trying something similar on its own platform, with select accounts reporting personalised Xbox Game Pass Ultimate offers in September, so account-based pricing is quickly becoming a wider console story. The practical advice is simple: compare the price on a second account in your household before you pay, because the cheaper figure may be only one login away. The Astro Bot deal in the screenshots expires on 20 November, Pacific time, while the wider Black Friday promotion runs until 30 November.
