Sony finally pulled the wraps off the PlayStation 5 Pro this week, and the internet responded with the collective energy of a group chat discovering the group dinner bill included an 18% auto-gratuity.
No disc drive, no vertical stand, and apparently no shame.
For that pile of American dollars, you get a bigger GPU, fancier ray tracing, and something Sony calls "PSSR," which sounds less like a graphics technology and more like a medical condition you'd Google at 2 a.m.
The pitch is simple: games look sharper and run smoother.
Mark Cerny walked us through a spec sheet that would make a PC builder nod approvingly before quietly checking their own bank account.
Here's the thing nobody at Sony wants to say out loud.
The regular PS5 already plays every game the Pro plays.
The Pro just plays them with more pixels and fewer stutters.
That's a remaster of a console you already own, sold at the price of a decent laptop.
Reddit, naturally, handled this with its trademark grace.
Threads filled up with people doing the math on how many months of Game Pass that $700 represents, how many Steam sales, how many actual games.
Others pointed out that a mid-range gaming PC now looks like a bargain, which is a sentence nobody expected to type in 2024.
The disc drive situation deserves its own paragraph.
If you want to play physical games, that's another $80 for the detachable drive.
Sony has essentially turned the console into a build-your-own-burger menu, except the burger is $700 and the lettuce costs extra.
The original PS5's 825GB filled up faster than a teenager's phone at a concert.
But "we gave you more storage" is not a marketing hook.
The person with a 120Hz OLED TV, a disposable income surplus, and a burning need to see Spider-Man's sweat glands in 4K.
Everyone else can keep their launch PS5 and put that $700 toward, I don't know, groceries, rent, or literally any other thing that has gotten more expensive this year.
The pre-order button will get mashed like a stress ball, and three months later half of them will sit under TVs playing the same games the old console played.
It's a good machine priced like a great one, launched at a moment when nobody asked for it and everybody's wallet is already screaming.
If you've got the TV and the cash, enjoy your sharper shadows.
Final Thoughts
The rest of us will be over here, squinting at our regular PS5, perfectly content.