Much like Premier League football clubs sign new players to ridiculously long contracts (a simplified and probably incorrect statement) to spread costs and avoid breaching Financial Fair Play rules, I’m starting to see the PS5 Pro as a cost/reward type of situation per year. Ultimately, it all comes down to when we get the inevitable PlayStation 6.
Manage Cookie Settings
No one knows (maybe Sony knows) PS6 Coming soon, but most likely in late 2027, 2028, or 2029. That’s three, four, or five years until the PS5 Pro launches. That’s a pretty big gap, and it would be nice to know the exact release year of the PS6 before buying a PS5 Pro. As an early adopter of consoles, I plan on buying a PS6, but I’m less inclined to buy a PS5 Pro (yes, $700 is a lot!), in part because its lifespan is a big unknown.
If the PS5 generation ends after seven years, I can only buy three PS5 Pros, which equates to about $230 per year. Eight years of PS5 use equates to $175 per year, while a nine-year generation (which may be a bit exaggerated) means five years of PS5 Pro use for just $140 per year.
I think you get my drift. I’m very disappointed with the $700 price point for the PS5 Pro. I wish they could find a way to get the price down to no more than $600 (maybe a 1TB hard drive?), but even then I’m starting to convince myself that yes, I can buy a PS5 Pro, and yes, I do need one.
The price per year is one thing, but so are the years themselves. If Sony came out and said, “Hey, Tom, you can’t play PS6 until 2029 at the earliest, just accept that,” I’d buy a machine that gives me a better experience for five years. That’s a long time. By then, I’ll be 40, one of my kids will be old enough to drive, and Robert Downey Jr. will likely have rejoined the Marvel Universe, left it, and rejoined it again.
But Sony won’t tell me (or you, sorry) when the PS6 is coming out. So I might just have to deal with three years. That’s not bad. Three years from now, I’ll still be in my 40s, relatively young. I’m not paying $230 a year. But wait, what if the next three years are the best three years for gaming in PlayStation history?
We just don’t know. There’s a rumored PlayStation State of Play Showcase happening before the end of September that might shed some light on this, but I honestly can’t remember a time when I knew so little about an upcoming PlayStation exclusive.
That’s all I’ve got so far. This is definitely the start of my transformation of the PS5 Pro from a pariah to a must-buy. I hate myself but there’s no other way. That’s the way my mind works. Let’s see where I’ll be on pre-order day.
