The PS5 Pro, the unholy matrimony of mediocre tech upgrades and an ill-fitting price increase, is officially coming to South Africa. Despite the already too-high $700 overseas price translating to roughly R12,300, South Africans will have to pay a mighty price to get the most ‘innovative’ console released: R19,500.
The Pro and Cons
We wish more than anyone that was just a figure we pulled from thin air to get more eyes on the website but no, that’s the official price you’ll have to pay if you’re a dedicated gamer trying to get a higher framerate without first degrading the graphics in God of War Ragnarök or The Last of Us Part II Remastered (PS5 Pro Edition).
That price, of course, foregoes the addition of a disc-drive which you’ll need to pick up separately if you’re an advocate of physical media. That, if you’re wondering, currently goes for R3,000 on the Koodoo website. Oh, did we forget to mention there’s a R700 vertical stand out there, too?
If you’re struggling to do the maths, that brings the grand total for the PS5 Pro up to a staggering R23,700. You can expect the PS5 Pro’s “limited quantities” to turn up locally on 13 December at all the usual retailers, though Koodoo will be happy to accept your pre-order bucks as soon as 1 November.
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Should a big bag of money unexpectedly show up at your door and you feel like splurging (and you’ve already got a decent gaming PC at hand), you can’t go wrong with the PS5 Pro. Sony’s put up some decent figures, promising an improved GPU with 67% more compute units than the original PS5, and “28% faster memory.”
That’s on top of the Advanced Ray Tracing, and “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” features, which employ AI (can we a get a groan, please) to upscale the image and make it that smidgen better than the original PS5.
The only potential upside we can see coming from the PS5 Pro’s launch is the reduction of the original PS5’s price, sitting at R10,500 for the digital edition, or R12,400 for the disc drive edition. That’s a big if and one we can’t see South Africa’s distributors relenting on quite so soon. Fingers crossed, we guess?
