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The original PlayStation console debuted in North America in September of 1995. We’ve since abandoned the era of gray consoles in favor of sleek black designs like the PlayStation 4 or the odd, whale fin-like designs of the PlayStation 5. But stick the upcoming PlayStation 5 Pro into a vat of gray paint, slap on an old-school RGBY PlayStation logo, and I’m already wondering why Sony doesn’t sell the new 30th Anniversary PS5 Pro as the base model.
Sony showed off its revised 30th Anniversary Collection PlayStation gear on Thursday. It’s to commemorate the original PlayStation console first released to Japanese audiences in December 1994. There’s a version for the PlayStation 5 slim edition as well as a revised PlayStation 5 Pro bundle. There are a few extra accessories sold separately like a gray PlayStation 5 DualSense and PS5 Portal with the classic logo and colored symbol face buttons. There’s even a special USB-C cable made to look like the original PS1 controller port.
It might be nostalgia bait, but at least it’s the cool kind. Sony even printed the classic shape buttons in miniature along the Portal’s grips and the DualSense Edge’s center touch button. The gray PS5 Pro comes with a vertical stand, a special edition controller, a limited DualSense Edge controller, and a DualSense charging station. You still need to buy the $80 disc drive separately. It’s also likely to be a scalper’s paradise. There are only 12,300 units of the PS5 Pro bundle available at release.
All the 30th Anniversary gear is going up for preorder on Sept. 26 through PlayStation Direct for anybody in the U.S. or North America.
Sony tried the same rose-colored glasses ploy with the 20th Anniversary Edition PlayStation 4 in 2017. However, the Pro bundle comes with far more accessories to make it extra enticing. Notably, the company did not offer any pricing details. Gizmodo reached out to Sony for more details, and we’ll update this post when we hear back. We expect the Pro bundle will cost several hundred bucks more than the PS5 Pro’s $700 base price tag with all the extra accessories.
Console gaming has never been inexpensive. The original PlayStation console cost $300 when it first hit the scene in 1995. In today’s dollars, that adjusts to $616. The beloved PlayStation 2 was the same price on release but cost $542 when adjusted for inflation. Of course, everybody remembers the “$599 U.S. dollars” debacle that was the PlayStation 3’s announcement at E3 in 2005. If you look at the same price today, $600 has the same buying power as close to $940 today.
That doesn’t detract from the PS5 Pro’s eye-watering price tag, especially since there’s no option for a disc drive in the box. If the bundle does inch closer to $1,000, you’re already in the territory of a solid prebuilt desktop gaming PC.
