Sony finally pulled the wraps off the PlayStation 5 Pro this week, and the internet responded with the kind of collective sticker shock usually reserved for a hospital bill after a fainting spell.
The console lands November 7 at $699.99, and that price does not include a disc drive, a vertical stand, or apparently any of your dignity.
For that kind of money, you'd think Sony would at least throw in a game or a controller that doesn't develop drift after a month.
What you get is a slightly taller rectangle that promises 67% more GPU compute units and a feature called PSSR, which is Sony's fancy way of saying "AI upscaling, but ours." The big selling point is ray tracing, that graphical buzzword that makes puddles look wet and windows look reflective.
Sony says the Pro can do ray tracing at double or triple the speed of the base PS5.
Great news if you've ever paused a game to admire a shiny floor instead of, you know, playing it.
Here's the part that's going to sting: to actually see the difference, you need a TV that supports 120Hz and VRR, which most people don't own.
So you're paying $700 to future-proof a setup you'll probably upgrade in 2027 when the PS6 shows up and this thing becomes a very expensive paperweight.
Meanwhile, the base PS5 still runs the same games.
Developers aren't going to make Pro-exclusive titles because that would torch the 60 million people who bought the original.
So the "upgrade" amounts to slightly sharper hair physics and a frame rate that dips to 58 instead of 52 in the one scene where everything explodes.
Sony is also selling a disc drive separately for $79.99, which brings the total to roughly $780 before tax if you want to play physical games.
That's more than a month of groceries for a family of four.
That's a mortgage payment in several states that aren't California.
Reddit, naturally, is handling this with its usual grace.
The prevailing take is that Sony looked at the economy, looked at inflation, looked at the fact that people are still paying off their holiday credit card debt, and decided the move was to charge boutique steakhouse prices for a console that plays the same games as the one already sitting under your TV.
The counterargument is that serious gamers with disposable income and OLED displays will buy it anyway, because they always do.
Sony knows exactly who it's selling to, and it's not the guy clipping coupons to afford ramen.
But here's the thing: the PS5 Pro feels less like a product and more like a test.
A test to see how much Sony can charge before people finally say no.
And based on the preorder chaos that's already brewing, the answer appears to be "not yet." If you've got a 4K TV, a steady paycheck, and a burning need to see Spider-Man's suit reflect light more convincingly, knock yourself out.
Everyone else should probably wait for a price drop, a bundle, or the sweet release of the PS6.
Final Thoughts
Your wallet will thank you, and your backlog of unplayed games won't notice the difference anyway.