As you probably are aware, earlier this week Sony announced the Playstation 5 Pro, coming this November for $700. It is supposed to come with a 45% boost in graphics prowess, and twice the storage space of a PS5, as I understand it. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t even watch the announcement video as lately I haven’t been using the PS5 much. There’s no reason for me to invest in a PS5 Pro unless it was so cheap as to be trivial, which was never going to be.
In reaction to the announcement, most console gamers fall into one of two camps. Either they shrug and say “That’s kind of pricey, not really for me.” or they say “Take my money, Sony!” Both completely legit reactions. But then there’s a group that just seems ANGRY that this device exists, and those are the people that kind of mystify me.
Right now the Digital PS5 (the Pro has no optical drive) is $450 with 1 TB of storage. Adding a 2nd TB will cost about $100 so figure $550 for parity with the PS5 Pro. That means you’re paying $150 extra for the added horsepower which doesn’t seem that bad to me if Playstation is your primary gaming platform and you’re a serious gamer. If you use your Playstation for several hours every day and really want the best graphics and framerates for the gaming library you already own, PS5 Pro is probably a good investment.
And if you’re that person, that Playstation enthusisast, then you are who Sony is making this console for. As far as I am aware the standard PS5 is not going away. If I’m wrong about that it kind of invalidates this entire post, because then Sony would be really pressuring people to spend the extra money.
I don’t even think the cost is so crazy. $700 gets you a whole second machine that has an almost 50% GPU power increase and an extra 1 TB of storage. You can trade in or sell your old PS5. The Internet says the trade-in value of a PS5 varies between $160 and $300 depending on condition, so let’s just say you can trade the old machine in for $200. So now you’re spending $500 for a graphics update and a TB of storage space. PC gamers are maybe thinking “That’s not so bad.” if they’ve shopped for a new GPU lately.
I am certainly not arguing that everyone should upgrade or that the machine is for everyone. I just think there is a market for it and that Sony isn’t crazy for releasing it.
But getting back to this anger thing, what is it about game consoles that people feel like they should expect to own the best versions? You can go down to Best Buy tomorrow and spend $5000 on an 8K TV if you want to. Does that make anyone angry? It shows the same shows that the rest of us are watching on our $500-$1500 TVs, in the same way that the PS5 Pro plays the same games that the PS5 does. Similarly, you can spend thousands on a home stereo system, or you can spend a few hundred dollars. Both play the same music. Most of us go towards the cheaper of all these options but real enthusiasts are willing to spend for top of the line. You can say the same for many things: phones, laptops, appliances.
I dunno, maybe there are people out there that do get angry that high tech toilets — unaffordable to many of us — exist, leaving the rest of us to poop in basic porcelain bowls!
I just find it all rather amusing. If I was still hard core into Playstation gaming I might try to get a PS5 Pro, but having just spent 3 PS5 Pros worth of $$ on a PC, I’m just not in that market anymore. But is $700 so crazy? When the PS5 first came out and were impossible to get, they were selling on eBay for that much and I assume SOMEONE was buying them. So there’s a market for this stuff. I’m not that market. Chances are you aren’t that market either, and chances are you really don’t care. But this fringe element who is ANGRY at Sony for daring to put out a console that is ‘too expensive’ just seems weird to me.
But maybe I’m missing something?
As much as you joked about a blog fight, I am honestly not sure we are at odds with our opinions. I do think that $700 for a digital-only console without the vertical stand shown in the announcement artwork… is a bit much, but I am also admittedly not a primary console gamer. I was never the target audience. While I wanted to talk about it, it isn’t like I can really muster much angst about it either. I think the price point is influenced way more by the fact that Sony was able to successfully raise their console price at home three times for the baseline PS5, and just assumed that would fly in the rest of the world as well.
Had this not come on top of the failure of Concord, I am not sure it would have really received much in the way of press. We are on a downcycle towards player sentiment and Sony at the moment and we are probably just seeing the reflection of that.
I actually meant to address the missing vertical stand and then spaced on it, because that’s the one thing about this announcement that does really stick in my craw. It’s a piece of plastic! Include the danged thing!!
I’m not bothered by the lack of an optical drive. I have literally never used the optical drive in my PS5 and don’t even know if it works. When I got the PS5 they were in short supply and the only reason I got one with the drive is because it was what I managed to snag.
But a year ago when I was heavily playing PS5 titles and frequently feeling annoyance at having to choose between a high frame rate and the best graphics options (and to be clear, this happens on the Series X too), I would’ve invested in the PS5 Pro. Now though, as you know, I’m back in PC land and having a grand old time so this is all kind of a theoretical debate for me.
I definitely fall into the ‘Eh, not for me’ camp. Ditto with the PS4 Pro before it. I just don’t get enough use out of a console (any console) to justify such an extravagance. (Not to say that my PC expenses are ‘justified’… But I do at least get a lot of use out if it!)
While equally mystified about anger over its existence, if that’s what it is (I also haven’t gone looking or seen it), I do think they made some baffling decisions for the price point they’re trying to command re: the no-stand, no disc drive (although like you, I only have a digital version and couldn’t fathom using a physical game disc these days), and perhaps less of an issue or ‘should’ve-been-given’ I guess, but still a bit weird, lack of a pro controller to round out the package.
In any case, I’ll just continue happily awaiting the now inevitable seeming PC ports of all these games. xD
The lack of the stand, to me, is ridiculous and seems really cheap.
I personally don’t care about the drive but I can see why some folks do. I don’t know if it is still true but back in the day a company would have to pay a license fee to offer Blu Ray Playback functionality. So there’s the cost of the mechanism, the possible cost of the license, and the power and heat dispersal requirements that come with adding the drive. The drive addon is I think $80 which doesn’t sound like too much for a Blu Ray player (it’d be really nice if the add on drive came with a Media Remote).
The Pro Controller is $200 by itself, compared with $80 for the standard, but of course that is retail pricing, not their pricing. But I can kind of understand them not wanting to include that. Plus you might get pushback from the enthusiasts who’ve already bought the Pro or Elite or whatever they call it, controller, and now they start clamoring for a package that doesn’t include another one in order to shave some cost.
Weird thing for me is, I still don’t find myself buying AAA games on PC. I mostly play Indie-ish games and MMOs on the PC but still go back to the consoles and the 60″ 4K TV for the big spectacle AAA games. Maybe I should find an old one that is on sale that I haven’t played and try it on PC… I might prefer it!
I have a regaular PS5, and frankly I can’t imagine needing better graphics than that for anything. The one I got came with a digital dowload of the latest Horizon game, and I was absolutely flabberghasted for the few hours I played it. I then went upstairs and back to playing ten year old MMOs on my PC. The PS5 is used for streaming, disks, and games as a very distant third.
Also, a device that doesn’t come with a disk drive is a hard no for me. Streaming services and even digital storefronts are constantly getting more and more mercurial about what a subscription to any given service or a purcahse actually gets you access to. The only way to be certain you can watch something you like is to own it on disk. Hell, there is a lot of stuff you literally can’t watch any other way now.
The primary point of a console for me is as a media device that allows me to use my TV as a dumb monitor that is not allowed to access the internet. So here in the land of the luddites, I have zero use for a PS5 pro.