The PS5 Pro’s Prickly Putrid Price Point

Alex Rowe
6 min readSep 10, 2024
The PS5 Pro console and DualSense controller sit against a colorful backdrop, alongside slogan text that reads “WITNESS PLAY UNLEASHED.”
Official PS5 Pro marketing image, sourced from blog.playstation.com

I’ve mostly loved the PS5 over the course of its short lifespan — but I don’t $700+ dollars love it. Not even close! I’m sure that there will be a hardcore legion of fans that disagrees with me, but just like what happened with the recently forgotten PSVR2 — I think they’re all about to get seriously burned.

This morning, after months of leaks, rumors, and speculation, Sony officially confirmed the upcoming November release of the PS5 Pro, and it has a price that only a diehard internet fanboy could love. All the bits of info that had spilled out before are true. It’ll have 60 compute units. It’ll run at a slightly faster clock speed. And it’ll aim to run more games in high framerates without the visual cutbacks of current “performance” modes.

But the price is big oof. At least, it will be for most normal people. It’s not uncommon for premium tech products to carry a premium price. They want to maximize profit margins on those that are the least wallet-conscious, and no one runs out to buy whatever the latest shiny thing is faster than an all-in console fan. If you spend your days yelling at people online about why your video game company is superior to their video game company, you’re exactly the customer this thing wants.

Most of us aren’t that guy, however, and when you try and look at the raw value of the system — it…

--

--

Alex Rowe

I write about gaming, tech, music, and their industries. Creators and fans are so much more than numbers on a graph.