Sony has been at the wrong end of the internet’s ire for the past day due to the massive price it cited for the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro. The console, supposedly a big upgrade over the original, will cost $700, which some believe isn’t worth it whatsoever.
There have been numerous sharp reactions to the price reveal in these last 24 hours, from YouTuber Blandrew labeling anyone who purchases a PS5 Pro an “idiot,” to creator Mischief saying Sony “can fuck right off” when commenting on the PS5 Pro’s U.K. price that adds up to about $915 without the stand and disc drive (including those two, the price approaches $1,100). The lack of these two big components appears to be the primary reason so many are hating on Sony’s pricing, with several discussions on social media naming this, among other things, as the reason they won’t be purchasing at the base price.
The original PlayStation 5 had an acute lack of first-party exclusives or big titles to justify its own existence, with the upgraded and heavily more expensive variant having even fewer originals to show off. X user BoTalksGames commented on this, pointing out that, despite its high price and so-called improvements, the first game shown running on the PS5 Pro was just a rehash of a PS4 release (The Last of Us Part 2). The PS4 Pro was nearly two times cheaper than the PS5 Pro and had dozens of its own exclusives and titles.
Yet another reason the PS5 Pro seemingly won’t be as performative as its original counterpart is simply the fact that players could easily purchase a solid PC for the same price, especially the price cited in the U.K. and E.U. Sony is bringing former PlayStation exclusives to Steam anyway, so there is quite literally no reason to buy into the price-hiked upgrade. As GPU and PC component parts continue to drop, with players like AMD continuously targeting a mid-range audience, time will only see the PS5 Pro losing to just about anything else on the market.
