1 wk. ago • 87%

The $700 price tag isn’t hurting PS5 Pro’s early sales

arstechnica.com The $700 price tag isn’t hurting PS5 Pro’s early sales

A sizable early adopter niche will still pay for the most powerful console possible.

From Circana analyst Matt Piscatella's BlueSky account:

PlayStation 5 Pro accounted for 19% of total PlayStation 5 units sold in the month and 28% of dollars. Launch month dollar sales of PlayStation 5 Pro were more than 50% higher than the November 2016 launch month sales of PlayStation 4 Pro, while units were 12% lower.

40 comments

I'm not sure this tells us much, since the first buyers are usually the ones who don't care what it costs.

The big question is how long can it maintain the higher price, once the enthusiasts all have theirs.

63
- Considering that the standard PS5 is still selling for higher than its launch price 4 years later (despite still facing challenges building up an exclusive library to justify the cost), I'd say that people are just dumb and will pay any price to have their shiny gaming console.
  
  14
  
  I kind of get that. I stopped buying PlayStations when the PS3 was so hard to get, for so long.
  
  I've loved every PlayStation I've owned.
  
  1
Would still choose a Steam Deck over this anyway.

37
- Or a PC
  
  9
- Still? Is it powerful enough to run the latest games without tweaking?
  
  Not criticizing, I genuinely want one, but tech advances quickly and it seems everyone is jumping to the PC handheld market (and I am glad for it).
  
  3
  
  Like 98% of them, yes.
  
  15
  
  Depends, I played Yakuza 8 with no issues ok launch and the newer stuff like the Ally haven't had a significant jump in performance.
  
  5
  
  Surprisingly for the most part, yes.
  
  A good example for me was that it ran Black Myth Wukong at around 40fps.
  
  4
PS5 Pro is a strait up rip off. Only suckers would buy this.

25
- Consoles exist to grift, now they are realising they might not need to sell the actual hardware at a loss anymore.
  
  -9
  
  Yeah but the consoles still have to be cheap enough for people like me not making the jump to PC gaming.
  
  So I’d say they have to be careful about the hardware price compared to a PC.
  
  Nothing beats the ease of use of a console, but I can tell you that if prices starts getting close, I’d pribably buy a PC that I can use for way more than gaming and watching movies.
  
  15
  
  The hardware hasn't been sold at a loss for years now though, the last console that they actually sold at a loss was the base ps3 which for 4 years even with accessory sales still didn't break even, the PS4 had broken even by the 6-month Mark and the PS5 broke even by the 8th month mark
  
  I assume with the PS5 Pro being $200 more, it's going to break even by the two or three month mark
  
  edit: added ps3 after base, apperently somehow deleted that
  
  2
Well, this all but guarantees that we'll see more ridiculously high priced consoles in the future, too. Good going, folks!

22
Sony saw how much money people were willing to pay scalpers for the PS5 at launch and decided to cut the middleman this time

13
Not surprised.
People buy product, get excited for next product. Works every time.

11
I feel like I'm the target audience for this and I have no interest. Ive bought every PlayStation, including the PS4 pro, though I did wait for the 3 to hit $400. I've had ps+ since the PS3.

I still have plus until july as I'd always buy a year or 2 on black friday sales. They've jacked the price of plus so much that I'm very unlikey to renew now. And $700 for the pro is fucking stupid. If the PS6 continues on this trend, I might just be completely done with them even though I really do like the exclusives.

11
- Except most the major exclusives are on pc so they aren’t even really exclusive
  
  3
- I hear you. I've had every playstation since the PS1. We even own a PS4 and PS4 Pro. Mythbusters was the beginning of the end for me. When they yanked Mythbusters without warning or recompense it drove home what I already knew: my digital library was only as good as the whims of Sony. I haven't made a purchase on their platform since.
  
  And like you I also have Plus for a while, but I've noticed more offerings are starting to be PS5 only. And maybe it's bias informing my experience but I could swear they've already begun enshitifying the PS4 store the same way they degraded the PS3 store when the 4 came out. They removed some of the browsing options, like browsing by category.
  
  1
- I fully agree, I've been slowly drifting away from consoles since the tail end of the PS3. For the price it just really isn't worth it anymore for how much I use. This time around I ended up going the X through they're all access pass because it came the 3 years of Game Pass ultimate, and that was pretty cool not 200 plus dollars a year cool but it was pretty cool, and then when the PS5 became available I got that against my better judgment because I have been Sony my entire life and I wanted Ragnarok (which I ended up never finishing).
  
  I was juggling two different subscriptions for a while a PlayStation Network and a Microsoft Game Pass subscription, but since I still use both of them it was kind of worth it, then Sony increased their price without offering any competitive reason for doing so for any benefits so I canceled and moved over to almost exclusively Xbox until my ultimate ran out,
  
  Now I have neither subscriptions and both consoles collect dust because neither console has a subscription that I feel is worth paying for, or offers any content that I can't just use my computer for without the need of paying a monthly sub. Last generation was iffy, this generation there's no way it's worth.
  
  1
Well no one is saving for retirement anymore. Climate change will take care of that. Live it up.

10
- Hey hey, some of us here are hoping for the 2060s and 70s to still be nice enough!
  
  4
Meanwhile in Sweden, it is 944 USD.

4
- does that include a VAT?
  
  1
  
  Yes but even with 25% VAT, it should have been 875 USD. And in other countries, it is 800€ (830 USD). Amazon.de sells it for 800€(sold by Amazon) and even delivers it to Sweden(for 15€). Amazon.se doesnt have the ps5 pro for some reason.
  
  I think Sony was willing to take a small loss in Eurozone, so that it can have a nice round price(800€).
  
  4
My hypothesis of this is that, this is happening because a lot of people were unable to acquire the PS5 at launch due to supply issues, and by the time the supply issues resolve themselves interest was lost and the customers were like I'll just get the next one, then the next one ended up being $200 more but since they had already missed the previous iteration and they don't want to buy a downgrade they were forced to either stay with their current PS4 or by the upgrade.

My point is I don't think that this is a sustainable model, the more they increase the price the more app that the everyday consumer is going to say man this isn't worth upgrading between the base model and the pro model, and while they might see short term profits rise, instead of buying both models people will only buy one which will lower long term profits

3
If you bought this you are a fucking moron.

3

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