The PS5 Pro's eye-watering price point is actually Xbox's fault, apparently. "A lack of direct competitor."

What you need to know

• Sony's PlayStation 5 Pro was announced this week, and comes with a remarkable price tag. 
• Priced at $699.99, it essentially becomes one of the most expensive home video game consoles in history, especially when you include the disc drive and vertical stand optional add-ons. 
• An analysis from Ampere has suggested that a lack of competition from Xbox is partially to blame for the price, as Sony seeks to boost margins for its gaming hardware. 

It's all fun and games in the PS5 Pro discourse arena, with console warriors lining up to defend or rage against Sony's eye-watering $699.99 price point for its mid-gen PS5 refresh. 

The new PS5 Pro is launching later this year, and comes with boosted GPU performance and Sony's first iteration on frame generation technology, dubbed PSSR (PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution). It should offer better ray-tracing performance, with Sony claiming that it aims to prevent users from having to choose between fidelity and performance graphics modes. The biggest talking point surrounding the console, however, pertains to its price. The PS5 Pro memes came in thick and fast yesterday as a result. 

The PS5 Pro costs $699.99 in the United States, but has hit over $1000 in some regions when converted into USD, owing to regional price disparities. In Europe, the PS5 Pro has hit €799.99, which puts it well out of the budget range of much of the market. Sony likely knows this, however, and will probably manufacture stock to meet projected demand, which one analysis suggests could end up representing around 11% of total PS5 sales by the time it hits end of life, matching the PS4 Pro of yesteryear. 

Speaking of said analysis, it was Ampere (via IGN) that offered offered some opinions  as to why Sony opted for this hefty price tag. Ampere blamed a "a lack of direct competitor to its mid-cycle upgrade compared to last generation," pointing at Xbox for failing to have a comparable option. 

Previously, the PS4 Pro went head to head with the Xbox One X, which was both consoles' first attempt to explore 4K resolution. This time around, Microsoft has no comparable mid-gen refresh console, with its previous reported effort, Xbox Brooklin, most likely cancelled (if indeed it ever escaped the concept stage.) 

Ampere also noted that Sony is seeking to offset supply chain inflation and boost its own margins with the PS5 Pro. Indeed, details shared by Sony itself with investors suggest PlayStation is struggling to boost its margins, faced with a difficult macroeconomic climate, decreased playtime hours and spending, and supply chain issues affecting hardware manufacturers across the board. 

Other analysis from Midia Research echoes other comments that the PS5 Pro is unlikely to massively change the game for PlayStation, and is largely aimed at existing "die hard" PlayStation users, rather than growing its overall base. 

"Superfans will buy this premium product,  which is still cheaper than a high-end PC GPU," Midia researcher Rhys Elliot explained. "PlayStation's most engaged users are happy to fork out extra to complement their core PS5 experience, as shown by the success of the DualSense Edge and PlayStation Portal peripherals (which cost $200 each). What's more, improved visuals are important for console players, with 40% saying graphics are a motivator for playing new games. Yet, the PS5 Pro might not convince many consumers to buy a PS5 if they haven’t already. Instead, the Pro allows PlayStation superfans to get the most out of their current and future games."

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Meanwhile, what's Xbox up to in the background?

Xbox has undergone some growing pains of its own over the past year. Fans may be clowning Sony for the price of the PS5 Pro, but Xbox has suffered its own negative discourse over its plan to publish more of its Xbox exclusives on PlayStation. 

The common perception is that PlayStation has effectively eliminated Xbox as real competition, with the PS5 outselling Xbox Series X|S at a ratio of 3:1 or even higher in some markets. Some estimates pin the ratio as high as 5:1 globally. But as the PS5 Pro margin-focused price point suggests, selling consoles isn't the full battle. Selling software and microtransactions is — and Microsoft's dominance in this space, across Candy Crush Saga, Diablo 4, World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, and other massive service games gives it a much healthier long-term outlook from a business organizational perspective. 

Sony of course makes massive amounts of money from selling third-party titles, such as Microsoft's own Call of Duty, but it has struggled to develop its own service games to meet earlier trends. PlayStation's most recent attempt, Concord, shuttered after just a week in operation. Microsoft has also been far more serious about building an Xbox cloud gaming operation, which some analysis predicts could lead a $40 billion industry in ten years. 

I think Ampere's analysis is short sighted to the fact that console install bases are essentially fixed now. The PS5 Pro has no competition because there's not a single PlayStation fan on earth, who would under any circumstances, buy an Xbox Series X Pro over a PS5 Pro. They're locked into their preferred ecosystem. There's very little swapping of audiences right now. Players may potentially buy additional consoles here and there to experience exclusive games or services, but they will spend the majority of their time on a single preferred platform. I don't think there's a universe where the PS5 Pro would ever have cost anything other than $699.99, even if there was a direct Xbox Series X Pro competitor lined up to match it.

This is ultimately why Xbox doesn't really need to have a competing option here. There's no universe where a PlayStation 5 Pro is going to convince an active Xbox console user to swap over by virtue of "super resolution" alone, which is largely unproven as of yet anyway. Xbox is quietly cooking its own "biggest technological leap" console for next generation, widely expected to be complete with an Xbox handheld to complement. Speaking only for myself, I'd much rather wait for that.