Sony announces Midnight Black PS5 Digital Edition for Japan
Japan is getting a PlayStation 5 in full black, straight out of the box. Sony has announced a PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Midnight Black console, so far confirmed only for Japan. It has a release date of November 19 and a price of 55,000 yen (about US$350), according to Video Games Chronicle.
Pre-orders begin on October 20 at PlayStation retailers and online stores in Japan, according to Gematsu. PlayStation Japan lists this version as a Japanese-exclusive model with the console language set to Japanese only. No launch has been announced for other countries.
The Digital Edition is the all-digital version of the PS5. It ships without a built-in disc drive, so games are bought as downloads from the PlayStation Store or streamed rather than played from discs. Across the wider PS5 range, players choose between that disc-free design and a model with a Blu-ray disc drive for physical games. PlayStation also lists an 825 GB Digital Edition model, a measure of how many games and apps the machine can hold.
For players who want discs later, there is a matching option. Sony will also release a Midnight Black edition of its detachable PS5 disc drive, with the same release date of November 19. The unit attaches to the Digital Edition and keeps the colour matched from console to drive.
Midnight Black is already familiar to PlayStation owners. The company sells a Midnight Black console cover for the PS5 Digital Edition, a set of removable outer panels that change the look of the machine. It extended the colour in January 2025 across the Midnight Black Collection, including the PlayStation Portal remote player, a handheld screen that streams games from a PS5 over Wi-Fi, and the DualSense Edge wireless controller, a premium pad with adjustable sticks and back buttons. The standard Midnight Black DualSense, the main controller for the PS5, works with PS5 consoles, PC and Mac computers and mobile devices, and ships with a USB cable for direct wired play on PS5 and PC.
The PS5 also supports backward compatibility with more than 8,500 PS4 titles, letting older games run on the newer machine. That matters for an all-digital console, where the library lives in a player account rather than on a shelf.
What makes this stand out for fans is completeness. Until now, black often meant buying panels or pads separately. This time the console itself arrives finished in black from the start.
