Sony's new PlayStation 5 Pro seems to be very powerful. But at $700 – plus another $80 if you want to buy the disc drive, since the console itself doesn't have one – many gamers are wondering exactly How It has to be powerful to justify the cost.
In this episode of The Vergecast, We try to figure out why the PS5 Pro has these specs and price, 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 announced that it would lay off another 650 Xbox employees – these are two companies with very different ideas about the same business, and it's not always clear who's right.
Now that we're done with our PS5 Pro chat, we talk about the other gadget news of the week. We also talk a bit about the reaction to Monday's Apple event, after briefly forgetting it was even happening this week. We discuss Huawei's Mate XT, the triple-folding smartphone that wowed people in every way the iPhone 16 didn't. We're very excited about Android's multi-window future. And we look at two simultaneous Google stories: the excellent Pixel Watch 3 and the potentially company-shaking ad tech trial. Google wins. Google is in danger. Google, as always, keeps on Googling.
If you want to learn more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, starting with the PS5 Pro:
And more gadget news:
And in the blitz round: