There’s bad timing, and there’s your former company president going on a podcast and telling game developers – caught up in the worst period of mass layoffs in the history of video games – to go “drive an Uber or whatever,” the very same day you announce a £700 console in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
Spectacular! If nothing else, Sony’s PS5 Pro reveal has at least provided a nice reminder of the console wars’ popcorn-selling halcyon days. All this just as it looked like Sony was finishing off this console war business for good, as well. Just as it was burying that ugly Concord business with a jubilant Astro Bot launch, just as Xbox was releasing its biggest games on PlayStation and its biggest rival appeared to be fully, properly out of any serious running for the first console you’d buy in the next generation, we get an all-timer of a self-own. An exorbitant piece of hardware that comes with fewer capabilities out of the box (playing the physical video games you bought for it; standing up) than the one that cost half as much four years ago. The hare is taking a nap, and the tortoise has been hard at work on another one of those timeline graphics with a black background and several upcoming video game logos on it which are all definitely releasing next year. We’re back!
It’s worth taking a moment to talk about just how shocking a £700 (€800) mid-cycle console refresh is, though. The conversation really begins and ends with the price, it’s the headline-grabber, and it is truly shocking. The only real counter arguments offered up here are that other consoles have technically cost this much before, and that the price is to be expected given inflation – even big Geoff Keighley’s weighing in with some handy stats. On the former: it’s worth noting the other consoles given (perhaps knowingly) as examples include the Neo Geo, the Panasonic 3DO and the Phillips CD-i, three machines that launched in another century and accrued combined sales of less than 5 million worldwide. Another, in real terms, is the launch price of the PS3. (The “get a second job” vibes returning just as we get “drive an Uber or whatever” and “go to the beach for a year” is really quite special.)
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