Sony wants $700 for a PlayStation 5 Pro, and it doesn't include a disc drive.
The most powerful console the company has ever shipped arrives this November, and if you want to play a physical game you already own, you'll pay extra for a detachable drive that used to come standard.
The pitch is familiar: sharper ray tracing, smoother frame rates, an AI upscaler Sony calls PSSR that cleans up 4K images in real time.
The GPU is roughly 67 percent larger, memory is faster, and games like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 will run at higher fidelity.
The problem is what the price tag says about where this is all heading.
Seven hundred for the console, another eighty for the disc drive if you want one, and a stand that also costs extra.
You're near a thousand dollars before a single game.
Meanwhile the base PS5 still runs most of the same titles, and the differences often amount to a slightly sharper image on a TV most people don't own.
But the money isn't even the sharpest edge here.
A disc-free future means every purchase lives on Sony's servers, tied to an account, governed by terms that can change after you've paid.
When the store eventually closes, as every digital store eventually does, your library doesn't move with you.
You're renting it, indefinitely, at full price.
This is the part nobody at Sony will say out loud.
The PS5 Pro isn't really a product for gamers.
It's a trial balloon for a business model where hardware margins are thin, subscriptions are eternal, and the customer never quite holds anything in their hands.
Every major tech company is running the same play, from phones without chargers to laptops with soldered everything.
There's also a quieter insult buried in all this: the assumption that we'll shrug.
That $700 plus accessories plus a $70 game plus a subscription is just the cost of staying current.
That we'll accept it because the alternative is being left behind by the people we play with.
Enthusiasts with OLED TVs and disposable income will buy it, and they'll genuinely enjoy it.
For everyone else, the smarter move is to wait, watch the comparisons, and remember that a console generation lasts years.
Nothing about this launch is urgent except Sony's quarterly numbers.
Every time we pay more for less access, we teach these companies exactly what we'll tolerate.
The disc drive didn't disappear because players stopped wanting it.
It disappeared because it was cheaper to sell us a box that only takes Sony's money.
Final Thoughts
If that bothers you, the answer isn't a rant online.