The PlayStation 5 had barely touched down on shelves in 2020 when players began begging for a Pro model. That was a testament to the success of the PS4 Pro in 2016, which successfully made the case for a mid-generation console upgrade. It increased the console’s power significantly, giving players a reason to upgrade ahead of major titles like Horizon Zero Dawn. It makes perfect sense that Sony would want to repeat that trick with the PS5.
Considering the years of hype, the grand reveal likely didn’t go as well as Sony hoped.
PlayStation’s Mark Cerny revealed the PS5 Pro in a nine-minute presentation on Tuesday that highlighted the new console’s upgraded GPU, AI-driven upscaling tech, and more. It all sounded great until the final moments revealed a whopping price tag: $700. The high cost now casts the anticipated console — and the entire PS5 generation — in a new light. Has Sony done enough over the past four years to convince players that the PS5 Pro is a smart investment? Technical enthusiasts may be convinced, but it’s going to be a very hard sell for most players.
Wrong price
In a vacuum, the PS5 Pro is a perfectly good idea. Sony’s nine-minute presentation made a fine case for the upgrade mostly thanks to its AI upscaling tech, which brings the best feature of modern PC gaming to a home console. The core selling point here is that the PS5 Pro will no longer force players to choose between Graphics and Performance Mode if they want the highest-quality visuals running at 60 frames per second. Considering that this console generation has struggled to deliver consistent frame rates, the new console solves a major problem.
The caveat to all of that is price. The console will retail at $700. That’s $300 more than the PS4 Pro cost in 2016. To make matters worse, it will be digital only. If you want to buy an attachable disc drive, that’ll cost you another $80. It doesn’t come with a vertical stand either, so players who want to replace their current PS5 might be looking at over $800. The cost eclipses every other console on the market today — it’s even pricier than the most expensive Steam Deck OLED model you can buy.
For the techiest players out there who are used to spending thousands on PC parts, the price tag will feel worth it. Digital Trends’ Jacob Roach argues that $700 is a fairly reasonable price when comparing it to similarly powered PCs. He’s right, and Sony is undoubtedly catering to PC players who think like that with this release. It’s targeting a niche; I imagine no one at Sony is expecting this to sell like a Nintendo Switch.
Sony’s reveal stream struggled to sell that idea, though. While Mark Cerny gave an elegant explanation of the Pro’s improved tech, a compressed YouTube stream made it hard to tell the difference between games running on a base PS5 and the Pro model. With few other tangible improvements to sell it, I can imagine many players walking away from the stream struggling to spot the differences. A bold price tag requires a perfect sales pitch, and Sony missed the mark in its grand reveal. Even if the math works in its favor, it’ll be an uphill struggle to convince buyers of that.
Wrong time
Even for those who see the value in the tech, there’s one big sticking point: games. The PS5 generation has been a strange one for Sony when it comes to delivering a consistent stream of software. When the PS4 Pro launched, players had an enormous library of first-party games that would benefit from it on day one. It also had plenty of big titles on the horizon. Horizon Zero Dawn, Gravity Rush 2, and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy were all incoming in 2017. 2018 would continue that momentum with God of War, Marvel’s Spider-Man, a Shadow of the Colossus remake, and more. It made perfect sense to upgrade in 2016 as it felt like the PS4 was only getting started when it came to games.
The PS5 does not have that same luxury. The first four years of the console’s life have been hit and miss. Spider-Man 2, God of War Ragnarok, and Horizon Forbidden West have all been tentpole games in the past four years, but the list of must-own exclusives that could benefit from a technical leap stalls from there. Sony has slowed its once constant first-party output to a steady trickle in the PS5 era, with only two or three major releases in a year. This year has given us the fantastic Astro Bot and the surprise success of Helldivers 2, but there are few reasons to run out and pick up a PS5 outside of that. In fact, the PS5 Pro will not get any form of first-party launch game when it launches on November 7. The closest thing it’ll have is an Until Dawn remake that launches in early October.
That wouldn’t be a problem if Sony had some big games on the horizon that justified an upgrade. That’s not the case. We’re largely in the dark about what’s in development for PS5 at the moment. We know that Insomniac has several titles in the works, including Marvel’s Wolverine, but nothing firm has been announced about any other primary PlayStation franchises. Anyone who comes to PlayStation for the kind of high-quality single player games that the PS4 was known for doesn’t have a reason to upgrade right now.
Naturally, there’s more to PS5’s library beyond first-party releases, as hits like Black Myth: Wukong have shown us. For a player who owns a PS5 less for exclusives and more just to play games without the mess of a PC, there will be plenty of games that will take advantage of the tech (Grand Theft Auto 6 is the biggest system seller there is). But at a $700 price point, players need to start weighing their purchases a bit more carefully. Does it make sense to upgrade to a PS5 Pro to play those games, or would it make more sense in the long run to build a comparable PC?
What makes the proposition more challenging is that it’s happening amid a major change in strategy. Sony is currently aiming its sights on live service multiplayer games, which are likely to fill up the last years of the PS5’s life. Bungie will roll out Marathon and Haven Studios is working on Fairgames, both of which could serve as Sony’s primary releases in 2025. The problem? Players don’t have enough reasons to trust that vision yet. While Helldivers 2 is a hit, the disastrous Concord was taken offline in just two weeks. If you shell out for a PS5 Pro this year, there’s a chance that you’ll be using it on an untested live service strategy that’s off to a rocky start.
The PS5 Pro’s biggest foe right now is hubris. Sony is pricing its console as if the PS5 is currently sitting on top of the world, just as the PS4 was in 2016. That’s a gulf between those generations, though — and it’s not just $300 wide. The PS5 is a black box at this moment. We’re living reveal stream to reveal stream as Sony dribbles out new game announcements with little runway. A console like the PS5 Pro is built to push its predecessor’s momentum, and that’s the exact thing Sony is lacking. Maybe its plans will suddenly accelerate in the next year. Just because we don’t know what games are coming doesn’t mean that we’re not in for a more loaded 2025 than we’re expecting.
But $700 is a lot to spend on faith.
