PS5 Pro Drops at $700, Gamers Realize They Could Have Bought A Used Car Instead
Look, I get it. We’re all adults here, right? We’ve been through the Great GPU Shortage of 2020, the “I’ll just check eBay for a PS5” depression era, and the slow, painful realization that our RTX 3060s are now just glorified Netflix machines. So when Sony finally announced the PS5 Pro, I was ready to be whelmed. Maybe even mildly impressed. Instead, I got a $700 slap in the face that comes with no disc drive, no vertical stand, and the audacity to exist.
Let’s break this down, because my brain is still trying to process the sheer chad energy of Sony’s marketing team. The PS5 Pro costs $699.99. That’s not a “premium” price. That’s a “I’m about to file for emotional damages” price. For context, that’s more than a Nintendo Switch OLED plus a Steam Deck combined. That’s a month of groceries for a family of four in Ohio. That’s a down payment on a 2007 Honda Civic with 180,000 miles and a “check engine” light that’s been on since the Obama administration.
But wait, it gets better. The console doesn’t include a disc drive. That’s right, you’re paying $700 for a digital-only machine that will still ask you to “insert disc” for games you bought digitally because the UI is held together with duct tape and spite. The vertical stand? Also sold separately, for $30. So if you want to actually stand this $700 brick upright without it looking like a sad, drunken penguin, that’ll be an extra 30 bones. Oh, and it doesn’t come with a controller. Kidding. It does. But you’ll need to sell a kidney to buy the official charging dock.
Now, let’s talk about what you actually get for the price of a small vacation: the GPU. The PS5 Pro has a new RDNA 3.5 chip that supposedly cranks out 45% faster ray tracing. Cool. Cool cool cool. So now I can watch Spider-Man’s reflection in a puddle 45% faster, while the game still runs at 30fps because the CPU is the same Zen 2 architecture from the base PS5. That’s like putting a Ferrari engine in a 1998 Toyota Corolla and saying, “Look, it goes 200mph now!” but the steering wheel still has a cassette player and the AC smells like burnt meth.
And the storage? 2TB of SSD. That’s nice, except modern games are the size of a small nation’s GDP. *Call of Duty* is 300GB. *The Last of Us Part II* is 150GB. *Grand Theft Auto VI* is going to require a dedicated hard drive the size of a microwave. So sure, Sony gave you 2TB. But you’ll fill that up in two-and-a-half games and then have to shell out another $200 for a proprietary SSD expansion that costs 300% more than a standard M.2 drive because Sony loves proprietary tech like Reddit loves armchair psychology.
But let’s not forget the real kicker: the price increase. The PS5 launched at $500. The PS5 Pro is $700. That’s a 40% price hike for a system that, by all accounts, is a mid-generation refresh that should have been $500 max. Sony is basically saying, “Hey, remember when you couldn’t find a console for two years? Now you can pay 40% more for one that barely outperforms the original in real-world scenarios. You’re welcome, peasants.”
I’ve seen the tech breakdowns. I’ve watched the Digital Foundry videos. I know the PS5 Pro can upscale to 8K (which nobody has) and run *Spider-Man 2* at a stable 60fps with ray tracing. But here’s the thing: the base PS5 already runs that game at a pretty solid 60fps with ray tracing. So you’re paying $700 for a marginal improvement that you’ll only notice if you freeze-frame and zoom in on a puddle during a boss fight. That’s not a console. That’s a $700 flex for people who still call themselves “hardcore gamers” unironically.
And don’t even get me started on the Sony fanboys. You know the ones: they’re already pre-ordering three units, posting “I’m so ready!” on Twitter, and defending the price like it’s their firstborn child. “But ray tracing!” they scream, while their bank account weeps. “But 8K!” they insist, while their 1080p monitor from 2015 collects dust. “But it’s a premium product!” they argue, as if $700 for a plastic box that plays video games is a reasonable luxury purchase in the current economy.
Meanwhile, PC gamers are laughing all the way to the bank. For $700, you can build a PC with an RTX 4060 Ti, 32GB of RAM, and a 2TB NVMe SSD that will outperform the PS5 Pro in every metric. Sure, you’ll have to deal with Windows 11’s ads and the occasional driver crash, but at least you can play games at 144fps on an ultrawide monitor while also using it for work, taxes, and watching *The Office* for the 50th time. The PS5 Pro is a one-trick pony, and that trick is “making your wallet cry.”
But here’s the real question: who is this for? Is it for the casual gamer who plays *Call of Duty* for two hours a week? No, because they don’t care about ray tracing or 8K. Is it for the hardcore enthusiast who already has a $3,000 PC? No, because they already have better hardware. Is it for the console loyalist
Final Thoughts
After all the leaks and speculation, the PS5 Pro feels less like a generational leap and more like a meticulous, high-end refinement—a console built for those who demand locked 60fps and ray tracing in the same frame, rather than the same old trade-offs. It’s a niche upgrade for the fidelity-obsessed, not a must-buy for the average player; Sony is betting that the “pro” in the room will pay a premium for diminishing returns. Ultimately, this mid-cycle refresh underscores a mature market where the hardware war has shifted from raw power to polished performance, leaving the rest of us to wonder if the next true revolution will skip a generation entirely.