Just when you thought it was safe to finally expand your PS5's painfully small default storage, the market has decided to hit you with a brutal difficulty spike. According to Polygon, Sandisk's latest PS5-compatible SSD drives are coming in hot with some serious price hikes across the board - whether you're eyeing the entry-level 1TB option or going full completionist with 8TB.

Your inventory expansion just got way more expensive

Think of it like this: your PS5's internal storage is basically a starter-zone backpack, and every modern game is a legendary drop that takes up half the space. You NEED to upgrade. Unfortunately, Sandisk has apparently looked at that desperate situation and said "yes, we'd like more gold coins, please."

The price hikes affect the full lineup of Sandisk's new drives, meaning there's no easy budget escape route here. Going small won't save you, and going big will absolutely obliterate your bank account like a poorly-timed rocket jump off the map.

Why does this hurt so much?

SSD prices had actually been on a pretty reasonable downward trend for a while, which had PS5 owners cautiously optimistic that upgrading their console's storage wouldn't require selling a kidney or skipping three months of new releases. That hopeful side quest appears to have been cancelled without warning.

With game install sizes continuing to bloat like a poorly optimised open-world title - we're looking at you, 150GB-mandatory-day-one-patch crowd - having adequate storage isn't really optional anymore. It's a pay-to-play situation, and Sandisk is clearly feeling bold about it.

So what are your options, player two?

  • Pay the premium and accept your fate like a true Dark Souls veteran
  • Become a master of the delete-and-reinstall speedrun
  • Wait and hope a competitor drops a more wallet-friendly alternative
  • Finally clean out those games you downloaded in 2022 and never touched

Polygon's report doesn't paint a particularly optimistic picture for budget-conscious players, and with no signs of prices softening in the short term, the PS5 storage struggle is very much still a live-service problem with no endgame in sight. Start saving those respawn coins, because this one's going to sting.