Sony finally pulled the curtain back on the PlayStation 5 Pro, and the internet reacted exactly how you'd expect: half the room yelling "take my money" and the other half wondering why they dropped $500 on a console that's apparently already obsolete.
No disc drive included, because of course not.
That's a separate purchase, assuming you can find one.
In a economy where people are still financing their groceries, Sony is asking you to pay rent-adjacent money for sharper grass textures.
So what does that extra $200 actually buy you?
Sony's pitching a beefed-up GPU, advanced ray tracing, and something called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, which is a fancy way of saying the console uses AI to upscale your games so they look less like a potato smeared in Vaseline.
Roughly 45 games will get enhanced patches at launch, including the usual suspects like Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank.
The real pitch is 60 frames per second at 4K with ray tracing on.
If you understood that sentence without Googling it, congratulations, you're the target demographic.
If you didn't, here's the translation: games look prettier and move smoother, and you probably won't notice unless someone pauses the screen and points at a reflective puddle for ten minutes.
Here's the part that's genuinely annoying.
Nothing about this makes your current PS5 stop working.
Your existing console still plays every new game.
Sony isn't selling you a replacement, it's selling you a premium trim level, like when car dealerships upsell you heated seats you'll use four times a year.
The disc drive situation deserves its own paragraph of side-eye.
A $700 console that can't play physical games out of the box means you're locked into Sony's digital storefront, where prices rarely drop and sales are basically a rumor.
Preorders opened September 26, and if history is any guide, scalpers already have bots warming up.
If you want one, expect to fight a guy named Kyle with seventeen browser tabs open and a Venmo account ready.
People with a high-end OLED TV, a disposable income they're actively trying to set on fire, and a deep emotional need to see Aloy's individual nose hairs rendered in real time.
Sony will almost certainly bundle this thing with a game next holiday season, and the price will soften once the early adopters have had their moment.
For the rest of us, the honest move is to keep playing the console we already own and let the FOMO wash over us like a wave we've survived before.
The PS4 Pro pulled the same trick in 2016, and plenty of people happily skipped it and lived full, rich lives.
Our take: the PS5 Pro is a luxury good masquerading as a necessity, and Sony knows exactly what it's doing.
If your TV cost less than the console, this purchase isn't for you.
Final Thoughts
Spend the $700 on games instead, you'll have way more fun.