PS5 Pro: Global Gamers Queue to Render the Apocalypse in 8K

PlayStation 5 Pro: A Console So Advanced It Can Render the Collapse of Civilization in 8K

By the time the PS5 Pro rolls off its Shenzhen assembly line next month, four continents are already on fire—some literally, some only on social media. Sony’s marketing department, ever the optimists, calls the machine “the future of play.” Critics reply that the future is already here, and it’s mostly comprised of unpaid internships and atmospheric rivers, but why not spend $699 plus tax to ignore it in 120 fps?

Global supply chains—those fragile spider webs we collectively pretend are steel cables—have been re-routed to ferry the Pro’s slightly shinier innards to 42 launch countries. In Rotterdam, dockworkers offload palettes marked with Sony’s familiar four-button sigil next to crates of Ukrainian grain and expired COVID tests. One longshoreman shrugs, “At least the console has a warranty.” His manager notes, off the record, that if every shipping container carried nothing but game consoles the world GDP would probably still contract 0.4 percent, but morale at the port bar would soar.

In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, midnight campers wrap themselves in Uniqlo fleece, forming polite lines that snake past vending machines selling canned bread. They discuss frame rates the way medieval monks debated angels on pinheads. A university student clutching a ¥75,000 pre-order receipt explains, “I’m buying time. If I’m grinding for loot, I’m not scrolling climate data.” This is the new international development index: hours of existential dread successfully deferred.

Meanwhile, in Lagos, grey-market importers haggle over air-freight rates that rival the price of a small wedding. One distributor, who also dabbles in Iranian saffron and Dutch solar inverters, laughs when asked about official pricing. “Sony thinks Nigeria is still on the CFA franc,” he says, sipping a warm Fanta. “We sell aspiration, not hardware.” His teenage nephew has already posted an unboxing video shot on a cracked iPhone 7; it has 2.3 million views and counting.

Europe’s energy crisis adds a layer of tragicomic ecstasy. The Pro’s 390-watt peak draw is, technically, enough to run a German household’s LED bulbs for a week—if that household could afford LEDs. Berlin’s senate briefly floated a ban on “non-essential high-load electronics” between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. The proposal died when someone pointed out that Russian troll farms would just switch to PlayStations for heat. The Bundestag settled for a €20 eco-tax instead, which retailers will, of course, add to the sticker price with a wink.

Across the Atlantic, the United States treats the launch as a soft-power flex. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo calls semiconductors “the oil of the 21st century,” apparently forgetting that actual oil is still very much the oil of the 21st century. Congress earmarks another $52 billion for domestic chip plants, most of which will break ground around the same time Miami becomes an island chain. Best Buy parking lots in Texas resemble refugee camps sponsored by Doritos. One influencer livestreams from a tent, promising subs a giveaway if Russia invades anything before checkout.

China, the factory floor of our collective gadget addiction, quietly limits pre-orders to prevent “irrational exuberance,” a phrase coined after the last time gamers rioted over a limited-edition Pokémon red. State media praises the Pro’s ray tracing as proof of socialist innovation, while censors nuke any comparison to the nation’s real-time facial-recognition grids—arguably the most advanced rendering engine on Earth, and one that definitely doesn’t drop frames.

All of this for what? Marginally crisper shadows, faster texture streaming, a future-proof HDMI port that will be obsolete by the PS6. Yet the transaction is oddly honest: we hand over a week’s wages to purchase a machine whose primary purpose is to help us forget we needed a week’s wages in the first place. In that sense, the PS5 Pro is not a console; it’s a very expensive screensaver for late-stage capitalism. Plug it in, watch the pretty lights, and try not to notice the real world buffering outside.