Sony Did An Awful Job Selling PS5 Pro, Obscene Price Aside

Sony has had one of the most ridiculous weeks in gaming history, shutting down Concord two weeks after launch, an unprecedented cratering of a new release. Then they released GOTY frontrunner Astro Bot the day Concord officially died. Now, they are being roundly mocked for their PS5 Pro reveal and its sky-high price of $700. With no disc drive. Or vertical stand.

While the price is deservedly the focal point of the discussion around the console, you have to combine that with reflection on the presentation of the system as a whole where Sony really failed to show how this would make a meaningful difference as an expensive upgrade to the current PS5.

It should tell you something that the presentation began reiterating that the PS5 was already an impressive console, which led into the Pro differences that were far from the leap forward most prospective buyers were hoping to see.

The memes that came out after the fact was the sheer zooming in on detail that Cerny had to do in the presentation to see small background differences like the sharpness of cars in the background of a Spider-Man scene or the far-away crowd in a Ratchet and Clank scene. The fundamental sales point here was that performance mode and fidelity mode are moving closer together with better framerates sacrificing less visuals, but there were caveats. Performance will not have exactly the visuals of fidelity modes, which was indicated. And the 60 fps was listed as a “target.”

Then there was what was chosen as a showcase, which were all already-released games for PS5, with not even one upcoming title showcased that takes advantage of the power increase. It seems pretty weird to feature The Last of Us Part 2, a remaster of a 2020 PS4 game, to show of the power of your $700 console. In fact, many of these games had some version playable on PS4.

The gap between PS4 and PS4 Pro, the previous mid-gen upgrade, was easily more significant than what we’re seeing here with the PS5 Pro, and at a lower cost too. Even adjusting for inflation, depending on how you calculate it, the PS5 Pro is either the first or second most expensive console Sony has ever made, and definitely first if you consider that its disc drive and stand are sold separately when those were things included in past consoles. It’s also $250 more than the current digital PS5.

There was just no coherent case made here for an upgrade. The differences shown in the comparisons were very minor, and they were all running on old games. Asking $700 for a console when those were supposedly the optimal examples to show off is beyond a tall order. I’ve heard the usual “oh well this is a super luxury good for those who don’t care about price no matter what” but there are limits to that, and Sony’s best hope here is that next year (or the year after) they squeeze out more sales from cash-flush players who want the system mainly to have the best hardware to play GTA 6 on. Though we have no idea if the system could hit 60 fps or something guaranteed with that game at this point, considering how little was shown here from both upcoming games and third parties.

Sony showed off a system in a way that demonstrates no one actually needs it. And I am not sure how many people even want it. We’ll see.

Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.