Sony has announced a Midnight Black PS5 but it’s only confirmed for Japan so far
The Digital Edition console will be the cheaper region-locked variant found in Japan
Sony has announced a Midnight Black version of its PlayStation 5 console, but it’s only confirmed for Japan for now.
As announced on the official PlayStation Blog, the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Midnight Black console will be released on November 19.
On the same day, Sony will also be releasing a Midnight Black edition of its disc drive, for players who wish to attach it to their console.
At the time of writing, the console has only been confirmed for Japan, and will specifically be the special Japan-only version of the console, which is available at a discounted price of ¥55,000 ($350) but is region-locked to Japan.
This means the console can only be used with a PlayStation account that has the country / region set to Japan, and the system language set to Japanese.
Sony has yet to announce whether the Midnight Black PS5 will be released in the West, but given that it currently already sells a Midnight Black Console Cover for $54 / £45, players who want a black PS5 can buy this and it will essentially become the same product.
The special Japan-only PlayStation 5 Digital Edition was first announced in November 2025, as an attempt to grow its audience in Japan by selling at a loss in the face of widespread price increases among its other hardware.
By selling the console at a heavily subsidized price of ¥55,000 ($350) and region locking it to Japan, Sony hopes to stop players importing it from other countries, but also grow the PlayStation userbase in Japan, a country where the Nintendo Switch has dominated in recent years.
“We were aware that, due to exchange rate fluctuations, there was a trend of PS5 consoles being exported from Japan to overseas markets,” SIE president and CEO Hideaki Nishino told Famitsu last year (via machine translation). “Given this situation, we decided that it was crucial to ensure that the PS5 was delivered properly to our Japanese customers.
“While ‘countermeasure’ may not be the best term to use, we believe that by making a Japanese-only model limited to Japanese accounts, we were able to set a unique price for Japanese market. By offering a more affordable price compared to the multi-language Digital Edition, we hope to further revitalize the Japanese gaming community and market, which is a key market for us.”
