“You can buy a gaming PC for 120,000 yen.” Japanese people have been seeing an increasing number of advertisements worded this way in the past few days. But what else costs 120,000 yen? A PlayStation 5 Pro, as recently revealed by Sony.
The announcement of the PS5 Pro’s steep price tag has caused significant dissatisfaction both in the US and Europe, where the console will set gamers back $700 and €800 respectively. But much like European gamers, Japanese players are faced with paying even more for the console than people in the US. The 119,980-yen price point is equivalent to over $840, based on recent conversion rates.
To make matters worse, Sony recently hiked the price of standard PS5 console models in Japan. On September 2, the suggested retail price jumped from 66,980 yen (about $463) to 79,980 yen (about $552). Apart from severe backlash across social media, this decision caused the console to sell out all over the country in the days leading up to the price increase and even gave the Xbox a boost in sales.
PC is like 3 consoles in one with it getting Xbox games, Sony games on delay, and emulating Nintendo games. Can use mouse or game pad without needing blessing of devs on a game by game basis. And is a productivity device too that can be used for stuff like coding, video editing, 3d modeling, etc.
I’m not sure what’s wrong with your PC, but mine can run a lot more than 3 different consoles worth of games ;)
And of course you’ve also forgotten about Steam, the past 40 years of computer gaming, as well as the easy(easier?) use of all sorts of mods and addons that you just don’t get on one of the major consoles.
Yeah but I am already spending most of time in front of my monitor, if I want to play something casually I will just do it in my living room on my PS5, which rarely happens anyway
Living room isn’t a selling point for me since I have a fiber optic hdmi hooked up to the TV that allows me to not have to have my PC next to the TV. All I do is grab a controller and wireless keyboard like the K400.
Getting a console and having to buy games for it would be money wasted for me when I already have a unified library and am able to either play at the desk, play in the livingroom , or continue on from the Steam Deck.
It’s an ecosystem and no need for having to have games for different hardware.
Stream your games to your TV. It works great.
Sounds like Valve might need to market the Steam deck harder in Japan. Show that it can be used portably like a PSP/DS and that it can be used as a console with a screen and controller.
It came out much later here than it did in the US, and you still can’t buy it directly from Valve - you have to go through an authorized third party. But I have seen the Asus ROG Ally in electronic stores. I’ve only seen the Steam Deck at one place, and I think that store has an arrangement to sell it exclusively. I haven’t been out looking in a few months, though.
That’s unfortunate. It looks like Zotac is releasing a handheld that looks super similar to the steam deck. https://www.zotac.com/us/page/zotac-gaming-zone-portable-handheld
With all the Xbox game pass advertising it looks like it runs windows. Hopefully one of the handheld Linux distros will work on it.
All that fancy hardware in the pro, and only a handful of games will actually be “enhanced”. Otherwise, it “may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games.”
Seems kind of a waste to me.
Not a very good gaming PC, certainly not as good as the PS5 Pro hardware if you need everything, monitor peripherals, GPU, RAM, etc.
As someone who switched from a console to pc gaming this generation, and started out with a cheap ass pc with meh specs, it will be more than good enough for most people just starting out in PC gaming.
True but it won’t be comparable to the console hardware. Has anyone done a cost/performance analysis of the PS5 Pro? Most of the time the cost is subsidized into the licensing fees involved in order to sell PS5 games.
And that’s kind of where the hidden cost of the PS5 is. Very rarely do you see the same discounts on Sony’s closed store for games.
