The PS5 Pro was announced today with an eye-watering $699 USD price tag, but if you account for inflation, it’s actually not the priciest PlayStation machine ever produced. That dubious honor still belongs to the PS3, but Sony‘s first HD machine didn’t try to charge extra for features like a disc drive and vertical stand.
After confirming the $699 PS5 Pro price and November 7 release date in a video hosted by lead PS5 architect Mark Cerny, Sony confirmed in a follow-up blog post that a UHD Blu-ray disc drive and vertical stand will not be included but will be available as separate purchases.
The existing PS5 drive – which launched as an upgrade for the digital version of the PS5 Slim – will be compatible with the new machine, but you’re going to have to shell out $80 for it. There’s no word on whether the existing vertical stand will be compatible with PS5 Pro, but it’s a safe bet you’ll need to shell out at least the existing stand’s price of $30.
All the reactions to the PS5 Pro price immediately reminded me of the PS3 price announcement, which gave the whole gaming industry sticker shock at $599 back in 2006. Adjusted for inflation, that comes out to somewhere around $934 today – but at least the PS3 came with a then-forward-looking Blu-ray drive as a standard feature. You didn’t even have to buy a separate vertical stand – it just stood up on its own!
The PS3 was pretty quickly trounced by the better-established, substantially cheaper Xbox 360 and dropped its price by a full $100 less than a year after launch. Of course, that was a much different circumstance – if you want a cheaper way to get a PS5, the original model is still there for you. The Pro is simply a high-end upgrade for players with serious cash to burn.
And while the PS5 Pro has the highest launch price of any console Sony has ever released, it’s still not the priciest ever. The ill-fated 3DO launched in 1993 for $699, and the even more infamous Phillips CD-i hit in 1991 for anywhere from $800 to $1,000, depending on which model you picked up. And that’s not even accounting for inflation – even the Atari 2600’s lowly launch price of $190 back in 1977 would still translate to nearly $1,000 today. All this is to say that while the PS5 Pro is absolutely expensive as hell, that kind of price tag isn’t unprecedented in the console gaming world.
Check out our guide to the PS5 vs PS5 Pro specs if you want full details on the differences, or find out how to secure your PS5 Pro pre-order if you’re already sold.
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