This console generation will go down in history as the first that ended up wildly more expensive than it was at launch. The increase in prices of components has led to gaming getting slowly pushed out of an everyday hobby and into a more expensive niche, as console costs are steadily increasing at quite a scale. Sony isn't alone in its increase on the price of its PlayStation consoles, but it also doesn't think the price hikes have done much damage to consumer demand.
In a recent Q&A with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO & President Hideaki Nishino and Studio Business CEO Hermen Hulst, the bosses explained that it's not "realistic" for Sony to just take all of the increased cost of components without there being any impact on a consumer. It was also stated that while Sony doesn't want to take a loss, it will monitor the market situation. As it stands right now, apparently people don't seem to mind paying considerably more for their consoles.
"At present, however, sales are proceeding as planned, and we do not believe this has led to a decline in customer demand. As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring the market and continuing to evaluate our approach. We believe it is important for us to make every effort to ensure that customers fully understand the value we provide in relation to pricing."
How does Sony want to increase that value? Well, it plans on expanding its reach, making mention of mobile and PC despite ditching the latter for its first-party single-player games. Sony also wants to get more value out of you, saying it's going to continue monetising its user base as it looks to build financially in the coming years.