$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.
If consoles want to remain relevant in the age of the gaming PC, they have to try harder than being locked-down gaming PCs.
Free and simple multiplayer, subsidised hardware, and physical game ownership were staples of most consoles for years but now the urge to turn every device into an “everything machine” has kneecapped the very purpose of these devices.
At best, these are slightly less hassle and slightly more social than a gaming PC. At worst, they’re as anti-social and user-hostile without the cost benefit that once made them genuinely preferable.
Sony will try to drag this thing out at least one more generation. If that goes like this one–and it has room to actually go worse–then Sony will have to make some hard decisions.
Sony’s problems are twofold:
- They are charging an absurd amount of money for a game console
- They are selling a game console that has practically no first party games for it.
If they had plenty of the latter, they could weather this. But there are still games releasing for the PS4, and they have had 1, maybe 2 PS5 releases that would qualify as first party this year (that don’t bubble down to PC).
I love the price. At $700 it’s just what I needed to convince my friend who was holding out for the pro to move on to PC. $700 buys a pretty decent AMD card nowadays. Shit for $800 we’re talking decent refurbished gaming PCs.
The side-by-sides are definitely diminished returns compared to earlier gens where hardware bumps had very noticeable gains.
I am sure the performance is measurably better than the base PS5, but I don’t think it’s $200-plus-separate-disc-drive better.
I also found the game choices they used for some of these comparisons to be odd picks. Sure you have “Made for PS5” exclusives like the new Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, and Spider-Man 2, but they also heavily showcased:
-
The Last of Us Part 2
-
God of War: Ragnarok
-
Ghost of Tsushima
-
Horizon: Forbidden West
-
Control
All of those are last-gen games that received PS5 enhancements. Being on a base PS5, I already feel like I am getting the “better” experience compared to the default for those games, so why upgrade?
Well, as a PC gamer, there’s a bunch of settings you can turn on from “last Gen” games to make them look better. Just because they ran on those machines doesn’t mean you were getting the best version. If you’re playing on console you’re never getting the best version. This newer one can just turn on more settings and a higher resolution and framerate than the previous ones. I wish they’d let players decide what settings they want themselves, but sadly that’s not happening on console anytime soon I don’t think.
Chasing the “best version” is a fool’s errand, though. Unless you’re buying top-of-the-line hardware every cycle, you’ll never have the best. And even then, there are games that seem to target future hardware by having settings so high not even top-end PCs can max them out comfortably, and other games that are just so badly optimized they’ll randomly decide they hate some feature of your setup and tank the performance, too.
Everyone has their threshold for what looks good enough, and they upgrade when they reach that point. I used my last PC for 10 years before finally upgrading to a newer build, and I’m hoping to use my current one as long as well.
But just based on the displayed difference in performance between the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro, it doesn’t seem like a good investment for what benefits you get. It’s like paying Apple prices for marginally better hardware, and with overpriced
wheelsdisc drive sold separately.For sure, trying to max out everything is a bad idea. You can always have from FPS and higher resolution, for example. My point is just that “last Gen” doesn’t mean anything. The previous console versions couldn’t max the games out if they had graphics options. The game being older doesn’t mean it doesn’t take advantage of more advanced setting with better hardware.
I think chasing high graphics settings in general is a dumb idea. My favorite games are low fidelity indie games that do interesting things (right now Ostranauts, but also Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, and so many others). The games that max out my hardware are generally worse games. If you’re selling your game based on graphics then you aren’t selling it based on gameplay. I know console players generally seem to care about “realistic” graphics more, but it’s a fool’s errand.
Man, this is true now, but this conversation makes me very nostalgic for the good old days of the 1080Ti, where PC games were absolutely a “max out and forget” affair.
Sure, that was because monitors were capped out at 1080p60, by and large. These days people are trying to run 20 year old games at 500fps or whatever. But man, the lack of having to think about it was bliss.
-
I already feel like a chump for getting the PS5. There’s hardly any games for it. Hell, there are some games I can’t play on it. I can’t imagine what’s changed so drastically in the last couple years to even be worth an upgrade.
What can’t you play?
Some of the transfered PS3 games (Katamari was one I remember). The Tomb Raider Puzzle game glitches (doesn’t on the PS4), and it seems any game that uses an app (tried to play a trivia game with the family and it didn’t work until we went to the PS4).
Not anything life or death, big named stuff works fine, but it’s just annoying to have to go back to the PS4 to have things play right.
At the beginning of this generation, I planned to buy a used PS5 when the Pro version was coming. I did not know that the PS5 would have almost no games for me (especially because they released the big ones for me on PC), the base PS5 would cost even more, and most people will not upgrade to the Pro because of its absurd pricing (note because it’s not worth it, but because the market for it is likely very niche).
I guess I will just skip Sony’s platform for this generation.
I don’t see the point in this. I’m already planning to get a PC (and a Radeon 7900 XTX will always outperform a PS5), so it’s just more money for no benefit.
It’s a pity SONY didn’t have any games to announce alongside the new console. There is nothing or there I feel like I need more power to play, and I already completed games they demoed, sometimes years ago.
Absolutely agree with this statement. They seem to have no pipeline for keeping up with this console lifecycle.
As the owner of a Series X and PS5, they’re just streaming boxes that I occasionally use to play stuff that won’t run under Proton.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=MApTG1wapJA&si=6CIbRLjbfUwV29IT
Great video showing the difference of the two
I do feel for Sony’s PR teams. Trying to explain the concept of visual improvements in 4K over Youtube’s increasingly vaseline-smeared compression is an impossible task.
What do I do with my PS5 discs if I buy the Pro one day? Are they just unusable? Will I be able to get a digital copy for free since I already paid them for the disc they stopped supporting?
It seems like there’s no sane migration path from PS5 with disc drive to the PS5 Pro.
There’s an external drive accessory you can buy from them for about $80.
I personally find it pretty horrendously insulting they put out a “Pro” console that can’t play the fucking game discs unless you pay them for an additional accessory.
Not a console gamer, but I’m sure they looked at the statistics and saw most players don’t buy a physical disk anyway. Why make the machine more expensive for an accessory that probably isn’t being used. On my computer I haven’t had a physical disk drive in probably 15y and haven’t ever thought that I needed one.
Well, sure, but that’s also because on PC I can choose to buy DRM-free games and have guaranteed backwards compatibility for the foreseeable future. Plus it’s not a closed system based on a console that launched with a drive. People (me included) already own PS5 discs, not from a previous generation, but from this one. It’s bad enough that I need to keep my PS3 around to play PS3 games, it’d be absurd to not be able to play PS5 games I already own because the thing is physically unable to ingest them out of the box.
So yeah, for people in that position the Pro is a hundred bucks more expensive than it says on the sticker, which is already a ridiculously high number.
Oh, ok then. Guess who didn’t read the article. :-)
Wouldn’t it be funny if like no one bought it
Like that’s obviously not gonna happen but like wouldn’t it be funny
I thought the same thing about Concord, and then no one did buy it, and that too was funny.
Things like this actually makes me sad because you know who to blame for the games failure yet you also know who will take the blame and who will leave with a golden parachute.
I try to focus on the part where the thing they were building was inherently bad for video games, so this makes it less likely for it to happen again.
Would be funnier if only scalpers bought it and couldn’t unload them.
$700 is too much money. Especially if you already have a PS5.
$200 extra for reflections between cars in GT7 or slightly better shadow resolution is not worth it IMO.
My PS5 already collects dust as it is, since there are next to no games that actually make use of its hardware that I cannot already buy on PC to run at higher settings.
I agree! I wanted one for another room in my house but at this price point no way I am doing that!!!
With the last gen and the current gen being basically PC’s why not just go the PC route at this point? I am kind of at that point right now
If you are the only one playing the PlayStation, you can do remote play via the computer, phone ,or even from a PS4.
You might look into the mini PC form factor and throw Bazzite on it for a Steam console-esque experience.
I have a few of these running HoloISO running around the house to stream graphic intense games from my main rig and to run smaller games locally. Runs fine with a 680m iGPU and I never have to leave the room I’m in (garage included) to play games if I want.
It cost more than a console, but far less than the 5 consoles I’d have to put out for that kind of convenience.
That’s actually why I went with the Xbox this cycle. I got a series x for the large TV and a $200 (on sale) series S for the smaller one (although we usually just use a computer monitor and play side by side on the couch).
Fuck you, I’m trading up. Have fun living in the past!
Sony is definitely living in the past, showing multiple years old upgraded PS4 games to promote the PS5 Pro
You’re not clever.
What a weird thing to say
PCs will always outperform consoles in both performance and capability, so have fun being a loser clinging to a failing industry.
Have fun insulting random people, love to see how that turns out for you 😂
Sweet irony.
This is dense. The base PS5 for a good portion of is life provided an unbeatable price to performance value. For a long time you’d be taking about $600 for just the GPU.
They’ve sold 60M units. This crap has been parroted by fanboys on both sides since the 80s.
How much were the ps5s? 500?
That would make their sales total 30 Billyun. Wow
We use our PS5 daily to both play games and watch media. It’s invaluable in our household. Using a PC for all that just seems to unnecessarily annoying, convoluted, and uncomfy. Sure, you could use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to use it off the sofa but the sheer simplicity of just using a controller to do anything is just awesome. Not even touching upon not needing to do maintenance to the PC, buying newer components once older ones get inevitably obsolete etc etc.
For me personally, the PS5 has been a hit since day one. And yea, its price was a little steep upfront, but it’s been very much worth the money over the past four years. I don’t get people who unapologetically bash consoles from a sense of superiority. I thought we were past this lol
People get real mad when I tell them it’s cheaper because I can rent and resell games. Just yelling no way it’s cheaper because you’re spending $60/ yr for online. It’s become an identity for them.
The best part of the PS5 is that you can buy and sell discs at much more reasonable prices.
But my feeling is that they will soon start shipping consoles without a disk drive. Maybe PS 6 will be the last one.
Big concern of mine. Was a huge concern when steam ruined it on PC 20 years ago. Game fly if you are in the states is worth it’s weight in gold. I played at least $2000 worth of games last year for about $300.
You can install Plex/Jellyfin on the PC and get a much better experience, watch on the phone, tablet, serve multiple clients, etc.
So your argument is unsubstantial.
🙄👌👍
Ok
You could buy a pretty nice PC for $700
You absolutely will not get anything that runs even remotely decently with ray tracing on in any recent title.
For the fair comparison you’re only allowed to buy new, not used parts. So, for 700$ you won’t even be able to put together a decent system with a 3070 in it.
“Oh but i don’t care about ray tracing” – nice copium.
I got a cheaper AMD GPU specifically because I do not give a fuck about ray tracing. Also just look at the steamdeck, you can get great performance for very cheap nowadays. It might not be as powerful or nice as a PS5 Pro, but the $700 computer has many advantages in its favor
“Performance”.
PS5 mostly runs connected to a 4k TV. I wanna see your steamdeck do that.
Is that a PS5 in your pocket or you’re just happy to see me?
Which could play MS and Sony games. I don’t think consoles make much sense nowadays.
And the best part is you don’t have to pay for online and you won’t need to rebuy your games each new console generation.
First one I’ll grant you, but there was no rebuying from last gen to current gen for anything non-Nintendo.
If you pay for the discs, you can’t use the discs on future generations. Right? Ps4 can’t read ps3 or ps2 discs. Xbox one can read xbox and 360 discs, but they limit it to only specific games. So in general, you have to buy it once again on their online store, if its available at all.
Yeah, idk why Ps4 has no backwards compatibility. PS3 (fat) was backwards compatible with PS 1+2, and PS5 is backwards compatible for PS4. I didn’t buy a PS4 for that exact reason, and was lucky enough to get my hands on a PS5 during launch to play all the PS4 games I missed.
With all the niche Japanese games I like slowly coming to PC, I probably won’t buy a new console ever again. (As an aside, if anyone has a spare fat PS3 they’re willing to sell for parts…)
The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.
PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).
From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.
The lack of backwards comparability is because of the large difference in architecture.
The PS2 was a128 bit custom processor, the PS3 had PS2 hardware in the original fat versions to achieve backwards compatibility, it was dropped to reduce the price.
The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.
With the PS4 Sony switched to x86_64 processors making the console essentially a PC with bespoke custom hardware. The PS5 is the same but better speced components as the tech moved on. That’s why the PS4 & 5 are compatible, they are essentially using the same architecture.
Microsoft is a similar story but they went all in on emulation of their old consoles which is why only certain games are allowed, they only allow the ones tested to work with the emulator.
The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.
Thanks for jogging my memory, I completely forgot how different the PS3 architecture is compared to the other PlayStations and also the 360. Same reason why emulation for it is so hard (and why MGS4 has no modern ports 🥲)
It just feels so anti-consumer and everyones forgets about it and they just happily pay for content which can no longer be owned only rented.
I agree. One of the few reasons I still stuck to consoles is because I could buy the physical games and have it on my shelf forever. That’s going the way of the dinosaurs, and while I love that things are more accessible via Steam or whatever, I can’t let my friends borrow my games, or pass it along to someone else to enjoy if I didn’t like a game as much.
I also just love collecting and displaying game cases and steelbooks and stuff. That’s rarely a thing anymore, either.
While pc can play old games, you can sometimes run into compatibility issues. Especially games in the ps1/2/3 era.
Og Xbox and xbox 360 games work without much issues on Xbox one and series XS. Ps4 and Xbox one games are 99% playable on Series XS and Ps5.
It did when the ps5 first came out. $500 for it was a steal back then. I wanted to build a PC at the time but due to the crazy GPU prices and low stock for other parts I decided it was best to wait. Got a ps5 instead (was also hard to get as well) and thought it was absolutely worth the price for the experience it offered. Just built the pc I wanted last fall shortly after prices started dropping. First time ever I made a good choice.
Even at the time it came out you could have built a pc with an RTX 3060 for that price, which would outperform the PS5 by a big margin and have a way bigger game library
Yeah, after that time I really didn’t think consoles would be as much as a midrange PC. And yet, here we are. Feels like Sony’s back to late PS2 era levels of hubris now.
Depending on how much you care about visuals, yeah.
A decent GPU will often be the price of an entire console. That said, even if you go with high-end hardware I found that eventually the cost will make up for itself for not having to pay for PSN to make use of and play on the internet. Or the fact that games are very often priced up to 50% more on the PS store than those on PC because there are no competing stores.
Get yours! Now with 50% more AI™
Hurry while stocks last!
That’s why you build your own. It’s actually really easy to do.
That’s a lot of money for a generation that just isn’t worth it.
Darn, I posted this earlier but sadly lemm.ee is having server issues. This’ll be the main thread, then.
Official Blog Post | PS5 Pro Reveal Trailer
The PS5 Pro console will be available this holiday at a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $699.99 USD, £699.99 GBP, €799.99 EUR, and ¥119,980 JPY (includes tax). It will include a 2TB SSD, a DualSense wireless controller and a copy of Astro’s Playroom pre-installed in every PS5 Pro purchase. PS5 Pro is available as a disc-less console, with the option to purchase the currently available Disc Drive for PS5 separately.
The big question mark for me is that not only does it cost 800 euros, it does NOT come with a disc drive. There is no version of it with a disc drive like the PS5, you have to buy it as an accessory. I guess physical games really are going away.
Yeah. Almost no one I know buys physical anything anymore. Kinda sad to see it go. We really need to instill some better laws around ownership of digital goods.
I occasionally still buy physical on the few day one releases I get because somehow getting that delivered to my house can be £5 cheaper or more
That’s wild. I have had one or two work out around the same price. Like I bought the SMT V Steelbook or whatever cause I wanted that sick art on the case 👌
I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.
I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.
If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.
I rent games via gamefly, I’ll definitely keep using discs
Laws aren’t going to help keep the price down which is also an issue apart from the digital ownership. It’s always cheaper to buy physical games as they go on sale. What’s stopping Sony from selling PS Exclusive for $100 only in their store?
Are we going to get restricted to only buying from Sony store or is Best Buy going to sell me a box with a digital code?
I was very close to getting a digital PS5, but I still need the drive for my old PS4 games and movies. If I were just getting into Sony now though, I imagine the story would be different.
No disc drive and no fucking vertical stand/mount.
And yeah. Sony actually tried to “kill” physical games years ago with the PSP Go (?). But that was still when Gamestop and Best Buy were power houses and there was a lot of threats of “okay. We will give all the good shelf space to MS and Nintendo” and that went away fast.
But now brick and mortar are basically dead and everyone is periodically pissed at Amazon because they did an unsanctioned 2 dollar discount on a new game. So we are seeing the return.
In theory it annoys me because the playstations have always been okay-good media players and I have one of the gundam breakers on a physical disc because that was the cheapest way to get all the DLC. But for higher end digital media we are missing the codecs (because money) and physical digital media as a whole is going away. So… probably the right decision to wean people off it.
That said: Charging extra for the fucking vertical stand is just insane since a lot of us had tv stands that cannot fit the PS5 horizontally. But also, considering this looke like it is a bit taller/longer, it also can’t fit it vertically so… Even more reason to build a new HTPC over the next few years.
Remap, but also Rob Zacny (so you can never tell how much is actually a bit), did a REALLY good bit where they immediately priced out the new Remarkable with all the expensive attachments and… it is still (probably) cheaper than a PS5 Pro with a disc drive and a stand.
Remarkable is, presumably, a good bang-for-your-buck PC build?
No. Its a tablet. Marketed toward Professionals because of its focus on handwritten notes and sketches and the kind of thing where even the people who swear by it acknowledge it is insanely expensive and not something people should really buy.
Recurring theme on Remap but it very much highlights what category the ps5 pro is in. Same with comparing it to an apple vision pro.
They can still kind of kill physical games with good service. The whole “honey rather than vinegar” argument.
That’s what happened with the PSVita. While overpriced game cartridges existed, most of its lifespan people were buying its games digitally which worked great for indie developers that didn’t have a budget for physical releases.
I mean… that is what happened on PC. I know people forget we exist, but basically anyone who was “a gamer” back in the early 00s embraced digital distribution and Steam for a reason. Because after the third time that you have done four disc swaps and entered three 30 character keys to play Neverwinter Nights 1? That shit gets REAL old. Same with needing to be aware of what order to install what patches so as to not brick Dawn of War: Soulstornm and have to reinstall everything.
Contrast that with double clicking something in fricking Impulse and then waiting 30 minutes for it to install.
Which is kind of what you described with the Vita. Nobody wanted to have to carry two or three UMDs with them anywhere they want (let alone the rise of indie games that never had a digital release). Tinfoil, but I strongly suspect Nintendo made a big deal about not licking cartridges so that the Jeff Gerstmanns of the world would… lick that shit. Which led to the meme and people wanting to buy cartridges.
My memory may be hazy, but I recall the mainstream acceptance of the digital distribution model on PC as more of an early 2010’s thing. People hated Steam at launch, having yet another launcher you had to download which was basically just DRM for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.
It wasn’t until their marketplace opened up and they offered very attractive sales that people came around to it eventually.
The writing has been on the wall for physical games for some time. If you want to hold on to your games, DRM-free is better than physical.
Sadly not an option for console. I don’t own a PS5 currently but when I did own consoles I would trade games and buy used all the time, it’s a shame this might not be possible next generation.
Welcome to Walled Gardens. This is why so many of us swallowed our bile and rooted for Epic in their lawsuit against Apple.
I know it’s not an option for consoles. Since the 7th gen, it was always moving in this direction. It’s probably one of dozens of reasons that PC overtook consoles in market share.
were basically at the point on the timeline where PC and Mobile basically kills consoles.
Arguably, consoles are killing themselves.
We’ve been there basically since the PS4/XBONE made it clear the focus was on common architectures and software toolchains so that the majority of games could be multiplatform by default.
The issue is what it always has been. People are afraid of managing drivers and software and likely have horror stories about Windows and hate the average Linux evangelist with a passion. Whereas consoles “just work”
And price wise? A good gaming PC that will last you a generation or two tends to cost about what a console+refresh SKU does. AND you generally want to wait until a few years after the start of a console generation to buy that GPU (time blurs but I want to say RTX was the big thing when the PS5 launched and now it is upscaling). Which makes it even harder to sell because you are telling people to save up even more AND to wait.
Much like “The year of Linux gaming”, it is the kind of thing that some people claim is constantly happening and the rest of us acknowledge is unlikely to ever happen en masse.
the difference is at least you can see it in more real time numbers. Xbox is clearly a dying brand, which leaves Sonys home console sales for now (~60M) and the switch as a handheld device. Devs are already starting to port everything on PC, and 1st party game development rate has gone down a lot. 3rd party devs are also starting to abandon console exclusively/timed exclusively over time (capcom making the next monster hunter simul release on pc instead of a year and a half cadence, square enix backtracking on making final fantasy a timed exclusive due to not enough sales)
Japan is completely flipping its old image of PC being the device for porn addicts of years past and starting to heavily buy into pc too, which is why Valve went to attend Tokyo gameshow to pitch the steamdeck for japanese handheld players(which remain the majority of console purchases in japan)
Devs have been porting (or originating) everything to PC since the PS4/XBONE era. So a decade or so? And first party development is lower across the board (excluding all the stuff Microsoft was doing before they stared culling studios left and right) because first parties are expected to release CoD level games rather than cool and fun platformers (Astrobot aside). NOBODY is doing Last Of Us level games en masse.
But basically you are describing the paradigm that MS have arguably been working toward since the start of the current generation. The idea that it doesn’t actually matter what hardware you buy so long as you buy the services/games of one of the platform holders. If you REALLY love Halo? Get an XBOX. If you REALLY love The Last Of Us? Get a Playstation. With the rest being third parties. It… just so happened that Microsoft bought most of the big name third parties and are figuring out how to balance “CoD prints money” with “We want to sell xboxes”.
But that still leaves what box you buy. And, in that regard, consoles are still going to appeal to “gamers” more than a desktop ever will. Especially as more and more kids become adults who don’t even like laptops because EVERYTHING they do is on a tablet.
As for Japan: The key there is not “Steam”. it is “Deck”. Japan has ALWAYS loved handhelds. In large part because the cities don’t have a lot of space for a giant TV and an entertainment center that can fit however many cubic meters the PS5 Pro is at this point. And a bigass desktop PC is also going to be a major space issue when so many people are used to a laptop while they sit in a chair or whatever. And while I do think the Steam Deck is going to do wonders to increase PC market share in Japan, I still don’t see it significantly overtaking consoles for “gamer gaming” as it were and to instead be more slotted in the mobile space and indie games like Stardew Valley that run perfectly fine on ultrabooks.
As someone who buys expensive games, games I’m excited for, or just franchises I’m invested in, the death of discs is going to really make me reevaluate my gaming. I’ll probably at least wait for a sale for every single game if I can’t have a physical copy.
Almost all of my digital purchases are cheap games.
