Sony just announced the PlayStation 5 Pro at $699.99, and it does not include a disc drive or a vertical stand.
If you want the full setup — the console, a disc drive, and the stand — you are looking at roughly $850 before you buy a single game.
The original PlayStation launched at $299 in 1995.
Adjusted for inflation, that is about $600 today.
The PS5 Pro, a mid-generation refresh that plays the exact same games, now costs more than the console that started it all.
A modestly faster GPU, improved ray tracing, and a feature called PSSR that upscales images to look sharper on 4K televisions.
Sony's own presentation leaned heavily on side-by-side comparisons that most viewers could barely distinguish.
It is a question about what anyone is actually paying for.
Here is the part that should bother people.
It does not unlock games you cannot already play.
Every title shown during the reveal runs on the standard PS5 that millions of families bought during the pandemic.
Sony is selling a luxury tier of an existing product to the same households already squeezed by grocery bills, rent, and holiday spending.
Gaming has quietly become one of the most expensive hobbies in American life.
Controllers fail and cost $75 to replace.
Now add an $850 console to the pile and ask a parent of two what that math looks like in December.
Every tech giant has discovered that the top 10 percent of buyers will pay nearly anything for marginal gains.
The strategy works because the people who can afford it do not blink.
But it leaves everyone else holding a console that suddenly feels second-class, even though it is not.
Not that the PS5 Pro exists, but that it reframes a perfectly good machine as insufficient.
Millions of families bought a PS5 expecting it to last the generation.
Sony just told them, politely, that it might not.
There is a version of this where the Pro is a smart buy for enthusiasts with 120Hz TVs and disposable income.
But the marketing does not speak to them alone.
It speaks to everyone, and it whispers that what you already own is not enough. **The takeaway:** Console gaming spent thirty years selling itself as the affordable alternative to PC gaming.
Final Thoughts
At $700 and climbing, that promise is breaking, and the industry seems fine letting it break as long as the wealthiest customers keep clicking buy.