PS5 Pro Drops at $700, Gamers Realize They’ve Been Playing ‘Fine’ This Whole Time
Look, I’m not saying Sony’s marketing team is a bunch of genius psychopaths, but they’ve somehow convinced a not-insignificant portion of the population that spending $700 on a slightly shinier PlayStation is a reasonable life choice. The PS5 Pro is official, and my timeline is currently a warzone between people who actually have $700 to burn and those of us who still have a PS4 plugged into a CRT monitor in 2024.
Let’s break this dumpster fire down. The PS5 Pro, for the uninitiated, is Sony’s mid-cycle refresh that promises better ray tracing, higher frame rates, and the ability to render your digital waifu in 8K. The price tag? A cool $699.99. No disc drive. No vertical stand. Just vibes and a GPU that’s allegedly more powerful than whatever you’re currently using to read this article. Oh, and if you want to actually play physical games, that’s an extra $80 for the disc drive add-on. So yeah, we’re looking at almost $800 before you even buy a game. But hey, at least you’re not paying for a vertical stand because Sony decided to sell that separately too, like a goddamn car dealership.
The internet, as you might expect, is handling this with the grace of a raccoon in a garbage disposal. Reddit’s r/gaming is currently a salt mine. People are posting memes about how their PS4 Slim can still play The Last of Us Part II at 30fps and they’re “fine with it.” Others are comparing the PS5 Pro to the Steam Deck OLED, which costs half as much and can play your entire library on the toilet. The AITA energy is palpable: “AITA for spending my rent money on a PS5 Pro because I need to see Spider-Man’s web-slinging in 4K 120fps?” Yes, yes you are.
And let’s talk about the actual specs for a second. The PS5 Pro comes with a custom GPU that’s roughly 45% faster than the base PS5. That sounds impressive until you realize that the base PS5 is already a three-year-old console that most people still can’t find in stock. The new console also features “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” which is Sony’s fancy way of saying they’re using AI upscaling to pretend your games look better. It’s basically DLSS for people who refuse to build a PC. The CPU is the same Zen 2 architecture from the base model, because apparently Sony looked at the bottleneck and said, “Nah, this is fine.” So you’re paying $700 for a better GPU, a marginally faster SSD, and a feature that makes your 1080p TV feel inadequate.
The real kicker? Most people don’t even have a TV that can handle what the PS5 Pro is selling. You need an HDMI 2.1 display to get 4K 120fps, which means you’re dropping another $500 on a TV that doesn’t have a built-in ad blocker. The marketing is targeting the same people who buy Monster cables because they think gold-plated connections make their games load faster. It’s a solution in search of a problem, and Sony is charging a premium for the privilege of being gaslit into believing you need this.
But wait, there’s more. The PS5 Pro is also launching with a lineup of “enhanced” games that include... wait for it... Spider-Man 2, Horizon Forbidden West, and The Last of Us Part II. You know, games that already look incredible on the base PS5. Sony is essentially selling you a remaster of your own library at a $200 markup. The irony is so thick you could spread it on a bagel. Meanwhile, Microsoft is sitting in the corner with the Series X, which is still $500 and plays Starfield at 30fps, and nobody is really sure who’s winning this console war anymore.
The discourse on social media is peak comedy. You’ve got the “enthusiasts” defending the price like it’s their religion: “But the ray tracing! The frame rates! I need to see every individual pore on Nathan Drake’s face!” And then you’ve got the normal people asking, “Can I just play Baldur’s Gate 3 without it crashing?” The answer is no, because Larian Studios is still patching Act 3, but that’s a different conversation.
Let’s not forget the pre-order chaos. Sony announced that pre-orders go live on September 26, and within hours, scalpers are already listing them on eBay for $1,200. The same people who couldn’t get a base PS5 in 2020 are now fighting tooth and nail to overpay for a mid-cycle upgrade. It’s the circle of life, except instead of lions eating zebras, it’s scalpers eating your wallet. If you actually manage to snag one at retail, congratulations, you’ve won the lottery for a slightly better loading screen.
The real question is: who is this for? If you’re the kind of person who owns a $3,000 OLED TV and a sound system that shakes your walls, sure, maybe the PS5 Pro is for you. But for the average American who’s still recovering from buying a $70 game and realizing it’s a 15-hour tutorial, this is a hard pass. We’re in an economy where eggs cost $5 and rent is a monthly existential crisis. Dropping $700 on a console that doesn’t even come with a disc drive feels like a parody of consumerism.
And yet, Sony will sell millions of these things. They’ll sell out in minutes, and you’ll see people on Twitter posting photos of their PS5 Pro next to a 75-inch TV with the caption “Worth it.” The rest of us will be sitting here with our base PS5s, playing the same games, and realizing that
Final Thoughts
The PS5 Pro feels less like a generational leap and more like a meticulous, almost surgical refinement for the players who can actually see the pixels—and who have the patience to pay the premium for 60fps ray tracing. While the raw specs promise a smoother, sharper experience, the real question isn't whether it can render a better shadow, but whether Sony has justified its hefty price tag when most eyes are still struggling to notice the difference on a standard 4K set. In the end, this isn't a console for the masses; it’s a polished, niche tool for the visual purist who already knows they want to see every single frame of *Cyberpunk* in pristine clarity.