PlayStation 5 Disc Drives Are On Sale, But Sony Still Doesn’t Think The PS5 Pro Needs One

I PlayStation 5 Pro it will be the most expensive modern console to date. A $700 device should provide a a huge leap in performance over the base PS5and comes with 2 TB of storage space for your games. What the PS5 Pro doesn’t come with is a cheap or easy way to play any physical game discs you might have. Even before PS5 Pro pre-orders begin on September 26, disc drive users will have to play their portable copies that are moving fast and, in some cases, sold out.

The day after Sony showed off the PlayStation 5 Pro, Amazon again Best Buy’s websites have shown the PS5 Disc Drive as completely sold out. As of this writing, it is still available with GameStop, The target, Walmartagain PlayStation Direct. Smart gaming deals Wario64 on Twitter/X first noticed the lack of availability.

It’s too early to tell if the disc drive will face the same availability difficulties as the PlayStation 5 did in the first few years after release. It’s a very expensive console, so we can’t imagine it will see the same demand. Sony said earlier there were no stock issues when it releases i a smaller version of the PS5 in 2023. The company has been selling a digital version and a disc drive version of its PS5 since 2020, although it made the drive modular with last year’s release. With the PS5 Pro, that’s no longer the case.

Buying a PS5 Pro Disc Drive Makes an Expensive Console More Expensive

We don’t have sales numbers, but if these drives are selling fast, it points to continued demand for physical media. I don’t have a lot of PS5 games on disc but I always go back to the huge left of PS4 games to play on my console. To me and many other consumers, Sony’s powerful $700 console is actually a $780 device. Even with enhanced 4K performance at 60 FPS, at those prices, I might save for it a high-end budget gaming laptop or putting money down Asus ROG Ally X.

A 2 TB SSD is a decent size drive for most gaming libraries but still solid. The PS5 Pro still has room to add your own M2 SSD for extra storage. Owning your games on discs doesn’t save you that much storage space once installed. If you have a large library and want to install everything at once, you may need an additional SSD. Those SSDs aren’t cheap, either. A 2TB WD_Black SSD it will set you back $260 MSRP.

Microsoft’s Xbox Series S is still a download-only console without a disc drive. Despite that, leaked documents reportedly showing it outsold the more powerful Xbox Series X three to one, at least as far back as 2022. So, do gamers actually care about disk drives? Well, I would argue that it definitely should. Not only is it backwards compatible (the PS5 Pro should play PS4 games with added benefits thanks to its “Game Boost” capability) and game savebut it is also a matter of ownership.

PS5 Pro Sets a Dangerous Precedent for the Future of Physical Gaming Media

Companies may prefer that customers do not own the content they pay for. Digital downloads, including those from the PlayStation Store, are just licenses to watch or play that media. Those licenses can also have been withdrawn, and customers receive little help. For Sony terms of service to provide strict guidelines for storing and using the games you purchase from the PlayStation Store.

Even though game discs only serve as a form of portable DRM to tell the higher-ups at Sony that you’ve legally purchased the game, there are other benefits to owning a disc and case. I can borrow from my friends. I can sell it when I’m done. Most games still require online resources to run at all, so even owning a disc doesn’t mean you’ll be able to play the game endlessly. At the very least, it means that the software contained within is still easy to read. Just look at what happened to some of the older, online-only Xbox titles out there Microsoft has removed the Xbox 360 Store.

Consoles remain one of the few pieces of technology that still support virtual media. There are so many other problems facing the gaming industry that it would be a shame if that also happened.