No, more fins! More. Flared. Fins.

Seven hundred dollars? Of money? Yes. That's how much the Playstation 5 Pro will cost when it comes out in November which, depending on how the election goes, will either be purchased by folks drunk on relief that we're temporarily safe from right-wing oligarchy for another four years, or as a balm for America's spiral into fascist dystopia. 

Sorry, until this guy is safely ensconced in either prison or
some kind of facility, everything is going to be about this.

Above: PS5 Pro Lead Architect and
Ken Burns cosplayer Mark Cerny. 

But enough doom and gloom, let's talk about video games. This last week, Sony announced the next uh...well, it's not the next Playstation. It's the next, slightly upgraded version of the PS5. I say slightly because in watching the video presentation hosted by Mark Cerny I was having a real hard time distinguishing the difference in visual fidelity between the two split screen images they showed us in the technical presentation, but then I'm an old who thinks gaming peaked with Super NES.

Intellectually I grasp that more frames per second and faster loading times are good. Or at least better on paper. Like, video game graphics now are the most impressive they've ever been. Which is something that's kind of always been the case, right?

"That's it, it's over. Video games will never look better than GTA III. Ever."
-everyone, circa 2001

Won despite famously having something
like a 50% failure/catch on fire rate.

But whatever, this is mid-generation refresh is--and I'm taking Mark Cerny on faith here--the most sophisticated video games have ever been so far. At least until the PS6. But seven hundred dollars? The Playstation 3 was six hundred when it came out in 2006 and that's like nine hundred in today's future money. At the time, Sony President Ken Kutaragi suggested that everyone simply get another job to be able to afford it, a suggestion that, as you can imagine, didn't go over well and most people agree that Xbox 360 won that console generation.

"Oh, you'd like to put a game in your $700
console? Well, that's going to cost you..."

-Sony, evidently

But I reiterate, whatever. Despite being a big huge nerd, I'm not planning to buy one. I'll have opinions about it, this is, after all, the internet, but I'll probably pay rent or eat or something, so price points and teraflops aren't really relevant to me. Still though, some of these decisions befuddle me. Like, the disc drive and the plastic stand that allows you to set it verticality aren't included so it costs extra to use physical media and to stand it upright. And that just feels kind of, you know, nickel and dimey? Or, more accurately, eighty-y and thirty-y dollery.

"What it instead of selling consumers our
product, they just paid us for it forever?"

-businesses

Pushing us towards digital games--which players don't really own, only license--has long been a dream of video game companies. After all, why sell someone a thing, when you can sell someone the temporary ability to download a thing which you control and can revoke at any time? It's sort of like how you could once buy software like say Microsoft office like on a disc, but it's subscription only. It works out great for Microsoft, but we, as the customers, are getting, uh what's the word? Screwed? Dang, did I just define late-stage capitalism? 

I'm going bleak again. Ok, well then can we just discuss how it's still kind of ugly? After the resoundingly negative reaction to the design of the original PS5--that is, it has an awkward flared shape and weird fins, weighs seven thousand pounds, and takes up your whole-ass living room--you'd think they'd have taken the opportunity to do a bit of a re-think. You would however be wrong. 

"What? It's totally different. It's got a stripe now. Oh, and did we mention you have
to buy the disc drive and stand separately? Because you do. That'll be $700 please."

-Sony, on why it's still kind of woof