‘$700 to see Cloud Strife’s nipples?’ PS5 Pro reactions a resounding NO THANK YOU
I love Cloud Strife more than the average person, but even I have my limits.
After having one hell of a week last week, Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Pro. It’s got 2 TB of storage, a fancier and faster GPU, “advanced ray tracing,” and an AI system to improve frame rates. In short, games will play faster and look sharper. All to the tune of … $700 USD.
For that kind of price point, you’d hope the games would look way better. But to the vast majority of players, the different is negligible. It’s definitely not different enough to warrant being nearly $300 more than the base digital PS5. What’s more, unlike the PS4 Pro, the PS5 Pro doesn’t even come with a disc drive. What kind of so-called “pro model” doesn’t come with a disc drive? For $700?!
As you might expect, the online reactions were incredulous. My personal favorite came from streamer @thegamersjoint, who just started screaming, “No. NO. NO!!” He eventually leaves his chair, paces around the room, and asks incredulously, “What, so I can see Cloud Strife’s nipples a little bit clearer?!” (In Final Fantasty VII Rebirth, you can, indeed, dress up Cloud like a little dolly so he’s shirtless at the birth.)
Other Twitter users pointed out you can buy three Nintendo Switch Lites ($200 a pop from Nintendo’s website) and still have $100 left over. Hell, you could buy two OLED Switch models ($350) for the price of one PS5 Pro. You can use the money you saved to buy the remastered version of Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core, which does not feature Cloud Strife’s nipples, but (spoilers?) does feature Cloud Strife moping on a bed in an upright fetal position. That’s arguably just as good, if not better when you factor in the price of admission.
Still, maybe $700 would be worth it to you if the difference in image fidelity was pronounced enough. But let’s be real for a second—the upgrade was barely worth it jump from a PS4 Pro to a PS5. The negligible difference between a PS5 and a PS5 Pro earned its own corner of social media mockery.
So the good news is: For the vast majority of gamers, the PlayStation 5 isn’t worth the many hundreds of dollars price difference. If you want an upgraded PS5, my honest advice is to treat yourself to an SSD upgrade for your current PS5 and call it a day. Use that $700 for something else. Like … rent. Or 10 or 11 full-priced new games. Or Nintendo Switch Lites: one for your each of parents and a shared one for household pets.
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