Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro looks like it might be quite powerful, but at $700 (plus another $80 if you want to buy the disc drive accessory, since the console itself doesn't have one), many gamers have been left wondering what exactly it is. as It needs to be powerful to justify the cost.
In This episode of The Vergecast, We try to figure out why the PS5 Pro has the specs and price it has, and what this new console might tell us about the overall state of the gaming business. Around the same time as Sony's announcement, Microsoft said it would be laying off another 650 Xbox employees – they're two companies with very different ideas about the same business, and it's not always obvious who's right.
After wrapping up our PS5 Pro talk, we talk about other gadget news from the week. We talk a bit about the reaction to Monday’s Apple event, after momentarily forgetting that it happened this week. We talk about Huawei’s Mate XT, the triple-folding smartphone that got people excited in all the ways the iPhone 16 didn’t. We get really excited about Android’s multi-window future. And we look at two simultaneous Google stories: the excellent Pixel Watch 3, and the ad tech trial that could shake up the company. Google is winning, Google is in danger, Google, as always, is still searching.
If you want to learn more about everything we discussed in this episode, here are some links to get you started, starting with the PS5 Pro:
And in other gadget news:
And in the lightning round:
