PS5 Pro’s $700 Price Tag Proves We Are Living Through the ‘Enshittification’ of the American Dream
It was supposed to be the pinnacle of the console generation. The “Pro” model. The machine that would finally let us leave our dusty, loud, launch-day PS5s in the dust. Sony promised ray tracing that doesn’t make your eyes bleed, smoother frame rates that make you feel like a god, and loading times so fast you’ll forget what a loading screen even looks like.
But then the price dropped.
Seven. Hundred. Dollars.
Not for a complete package, mind you. No disc drive. No vertical stand. You want to actually play your physical copy of *Spider-Man 2*? That’ll be an extra $79.99 for the detachable disc drive, please. Want the console to stand upright without wobbling like a drunk uncle at a wedding? That’s another $29.99.
Let that sink in for a moment. The “Pro” console—the aspirational, premium version of a toy we use to escape the crushing weight of reality—costs nearly as much as a used 2012 Honda Civic with a check engine light.
And yet, the most disturbing part isn’t the price itself. It’s the fact that we’ve been trained to accept it.
We are living through the Great Consumer Gaslighting. We are being told, with a straight face, that a $700 machine that requires a $70 game subscription, a $70 game purchase, and a $400 4K TV to even *see* its benefits is somehow a “value proposition.” We are being told that if we don’t have the money, it’s because we aren’t working hard enough, aren’t optimizing our lives, aren’t “investing in our happiness.”
This is the enshittification of the American Dream, and it has arrived on your living room floor.
Let’s break down the moral rot here. The PS5 Pro isn’t a luxury good for the wealthy. It’s a psychological weapon aimed squarely at the middle class. It’s a test. A loyalty test. Sony is asking: *How much of your dignity and disposable income are you willing to part with for a marginally better reflection off a virtual puddle of water in a video game?*
The answer, historically, has been “a lot.” We saw it with the $1,000 iPhone. We saw it with the $2,000 GPU. We saw it with the $5,000 gaming PC that runs *Minecraft* with shaders. We have been conditioned to believe that the price of admission to the “good life” is perpetual, escalating debt.
But the PS5 Pro represents a new low. It’s a console. The entire point of a console was supposed to be *accessibility*. You buy the box, you plug it in, you play. It was the egalitarian alternative to the PC master race. It was the promise that for $400, you and your kid could both experience joy.
Now? The $700 price tag is a velvet rope. It’s a silent, digital class war.
Think about the American family right now. Inflation is eating paychecks. Rent is a nightmare. Gas is a luxury. Student loan payments are resuming. And here comes Sony, with a product that screams: *“Your current experience is insufficient. You are a peasant. Upgrade or be left behind.”*
And the worst part? It works. Because we are a nation of dopamine addicts. We crave the incremental upgrade. The 5% faster load time. The 10% sharper texture. We have been trained to believe that our joy is directly proportional to our spending.
This isn’t about gaming anymore. This is about the death of the shared cultural experience. Remember when everyone played the same games on the same console? When your buddy came over and you passed the controller? The PS5 Pro is a machine designed for solitary, hyper-individualized consumption. It’s a status symbol for a lonely, disconnected society.
The price tag is the final confirmation that the American Dream—the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have the nice things—is a lie. The rules have changed. The nice things are now designed to be just out of reach. They are engineered to make you feel inadequate, to make you feel like you are failing, to make you feel like you *need* to spend more just to keep up.
And what do you get for your $700? A machine that plays the same games you already own, just a little bit better. A machine that will be obsolete in three years when the PS6 drops. A machine that, for the average person, provides a negligible improvement in actual daily life.
This is the moral crisis of our time. We are a society that can afford to spend $700 on a video game console but can’t afford to fix our roads, educate our children, or provide healthcare for our elderly. We are a society that will line up for hours to buy a piece of plastic that promises a fleeting escape from the very real, very broken world outside our doors.
The PS5 Pro is not a product. It is a confession. It is a confession from the tech industry that they see us as marks, not customers. It is a confession from ourselves that we are willing to trade our financial stability for a fleeting moment of digital bliss.
The real question isn’t whether you can afford the PS5 Pro. The real question is: What are you willing to sacrifice to prove you still belong?
Final Thoughts
Having spent years tracking console mid-cycle refreshes, the PS5 Pro feels less like a revolutionary leap and more like a highly calculated, premium-tier correction for the enthusiast market. Sony has clearly focused on eliminating the visual compromise between Fidelity and Performance modes—a persistent headache for players with 120Hz displays—but the lack of a bundled disc drive and the steep price tag suggest they are betting on a niche of loyalists rather than the mainstream. In the end, this is an impressive piece of engineering that solves a very specific problem for a very specific player, but the era of the budget-friendly “Pro” model is definitively over.