PS5 Pro's biggest problem isn't its price, it's the PS6
And maybe give us some clue as to what the PS5 line-up is going to be like in the coming years.
Much like Premier League football clubs signing new players on ridiculous length contracts to (here comes a simplified and likely incorrect statement) spread the cost and avoid coming foul of financial fair play rules, I've started to look at the PS5 Pro as a cost/reward per year-type situation. In the end, it all comes down to when we're going to get the inevitable PlayStation 6.
No one knows (maybe Sony knows) when the PS6 is going to be released, but there's a very good chance it'll be at the end of 2027, 2028 or 2029. That's either three, four, or five years from the release of the PS5 Pro. That is quite a wide margin, and the exact year the PS6 launches in would be wonderful to know ahead of a potential PS5 Pro purchase. As a console early adopter I'm going to buy a PS6, but I'm less sold on buying a PS5 Pro (yes, $700 is a lot!), partly because its lifespan is a big unknown.
If the PS5 generation ends after seven years, I'd get just three out of the PS5 Pro, equating to approximately $230 a year. An eight-year run for the PS5 equates to $175 a year, while a nine-year (this might be pushing it) generation means five years of PS5 Pro and just $140 a year.
I think you can see what my mind is trying to do here. I'm super down on the $700 price point of the PS5 Pro. I wish they'd managed to get it down to no more than $600 (1TB drive maybe?), but even so I've started trying to convince myself that; yes, I can justify a PS5 Pro, and that yes, I do need one.
Price per year is one thing, but so is the number of years itself. If Sony came out and said, "hey Tom, you're not going to be playing a PS6 until 2029, at the earliest, deal with it," I'd be buying into a machine that would be giving me better experiences for FIVE YEARS. That's a long time. By that time I'd be on the wrong end of 40, one of my kids would nearly be old enough to drive, and Robert Downey Jnr would likely have rejoined and left and rejoined the MCU.
But Sony isn't going to tell me (or you, sorry) when the PS6 is going to launch. So I might only have to deal with three years. That's not so bad. In three years I'll still be mid-40s, a relative spring chicken. I'm not paying $230 a year. Hold on, though, what if the next three years are the most stacked with amazing games in the history of PlayStation?
We just don't know. There are rumours of a PlayStation State of Play Showcase before the end of September that might shed some light on this, but I don't really remember a time in which I knew less about what exclusives were coming to PlayStation.
And that's all I've got at the moment. This is undoubtedly the start of my slow reframing of the PS5 Pro from a pariah to must-buyer. I hate myself, but there's no other way. It's how my mind works. Let's see where I am come pre-order day.