Sony’s PS5 Pro is the only major hardware launch we’re getting this year – making 2024 a bit of a damp squib when you consider it was originally expected to bring a similarly specific revision to the Xbox Series X and perhaps even the launch of Nintendo’s Switch sequel.

It’s quite telling that Nintendo is letting the one bit of information about the upcoming device off the table – totally unsurprising news that it will be backwards compatible with the Switch – has largely overshadowed the launch of the PS5 Pro.

Sony has found a special niche for its Pro consoles; they’re a way to double-dip into hardcore enthusiasts’ wallets mid-cycle, and they can also serve a useful role in convincing owners of older hardware to finally upgrade. The PS5 Pro’s very high price tag means it will probably do better in the former role than the latter, but either way the market share it will end up with will be similar to that of the PS4 Pro – respectable enough, but hardly exciting.

Discussion of the exact advantages of the Pro console is within the realm Digital foundrynot mere mortals like myself whose eyes cross trying to count pixels, and your interpretation of the value of those benefits and whether they justify the cost of mid-cycle upgrade is an incredibly subjective judgment.

What I would argue is actually more interesting about the PS5 Pro in a wider perspective is not what Sony has done with the chips in the system – it’s what they’ve chosen not to include, and what that tells us about the decision-making process that’s likely to occur for the company’s future hardware.

The PS5 Pro does not have a disc drive. Anyone looking to play disc-based games on the system will need to buy one of the add-on units Sony started selling when the PS5 Slim model was released, further adding to the cost of the already very expensive unit.

To add insult to injury, Sony seems to have made no effort whatsoever to ensure that these devices are actually well-stocked for the launch of the Pro. I can only speak directly to the situation in Japan, where they have been out of stock at most major retailers for months and even used units are being sold at three to four times the SRP by scalpers. But asking around suggests that the situation is not much better in other regions. It’s a very rough welcome to PS5 Pro ownership for anyone upgrading who has a collection of games on disc.

It’s possible, of course, that Sony left the device out simply because its cost would push the Pro’s price tag even higher. But the incongruity of Sony’s “Pro” console lacking the basic ability to play the games Sony sells at retailers worldwide is striking, and it’s hard to see the decision to accept that inconsistency – and the inconvenience it would inevitably cause to customers – as anything but strategic.

Digital sales make up a bigger and bigger part of the industry’s revenue every year, but physical game sales are still a very big deal – and physical games are products that fall outside the control of publishers and platform holders in a way they’ve increasingly found. annoying in recent years.

People who buy physical games can sell them used or lend them to their friends, retailers with physical games in stock can discount them or include them in bundles as they see fit… All this is anathema to the executive minds that created our modern dystopia where consumers never actually own anything they buy.

Just a decade ago, Sony made a very big deal of its commitment to the simplicity of physical media ownership, essentially winning an entire console generation with a short video of Shuhei Yoshida giving a game to Adam Boyes. Now the company has launched its top console without the ability to play physical media.

The writing seems to be on the wall; if playing games from a disc is labeled as un-“Professional” behavior in this generation, it seems very likely that the next generation will try to drop discs entirely.

It’s a decision that would be far more popular in the boardroom than in the living room of the company’s actual consumers. For all that consumers have embraced digital games – the revenue numbers prove it – it’s striking that they seem very ambivalent about digital-only consoles.

The PS5’s discless model was dramatically less popular than the disc-enabled one in every territory we have data for. Consumers are quite sophisticated in this matter; they like the convenience of digital games, but seem very unhappy with the idea of ​​having the option of physical media taken away from them.

Finding out how strong the opposition to such a move would be is probably a big concern for some people at Sony right now. If so, the PS5 Pro is a pretty interesting test case, and right now feels like a botched job on this front – it’s frankly extremely damaging to the PlayStation brand that anyone who buys one of these new consoles and wants to play physical media driven into the arms of scalpers trying to get hold of a disc drive.

The writing seems to be on the wall; if playing games from a disc is labeled as un-“Professional” behavior in this generation, it seems very likely that the next generation will try to drop discs entirely

I should clarify that I don’t think there’s any conspiracy behind the discs’ lack of availability – Sony isn’t trying to force people out of buying a disc by limiting supply, they’ve just been extremely poor at managing supply chains for peripherals and other devices during the in recent years, with other products such as PlayStation Portal and the DualSense Edge controller also facing similar issues. After all, Sony is still very, very good at designing hardware, somewhere along the way they completely lost their once-legendary competence in managing supply chains and keeping retail channels stocked.

That group of consumers who want to play physical media is not a small fraction. Almost everyone will surely buy one of these consoles – the Venn diagram of people willing to spend this much money on a fairly modest mid-cycle spec, and people whose passion for this medium is partly shown by their impressively large shelf with physical games, is probably more or less a completely overlapping circle. This was very wrong part of the audience to start this experiment with digital consoles on.

Physical media, despite being an annoyance to publishers and platform holders, remains a pillar of this business. That remains especially important for older generations of consumers – who are most likely to actually be able to afford the industry’s increasingly expensive products.

There’s a solid reason why Nintendo remains so closely tied to physical media – the announcement that its Switch successor will be backwards compatible essentially confirms that it will continue to launch cartridge games for that console.

For its part, Sony seems keen to move on to an all-digital future, with the otherwise baffling PS5 Pro decision-making a clear sign in that direction – but the company may have grossly underestimated the strength of the public’s affection for the physical media alternative and the value that the availability of that medium creates for the console ecosystem as a whole.

Perhaps the feedback to the Pro will give it pause as it finalizes a decision on whether the PS6 should continue this grand experiment.