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Quick summary
The optional disc-drive add-on for PS5 owners is sold out everywhere, after the reveal that the PS5 Pro won’t come with a drive.
Sony hasn’t commented yet, but we’ll have to hope stock issues ease soon.
People are enduring a flashback to the worst days of the PlayStation 5 stock shortage back when that console launched, after the announcement this week of the PS5 Pro.
Sony’s upcoming mid-generation upgrade has been unveiled as a disc-less, digital-only console, which has caused much comment given its astonishing £699.99/$699.99/€799.99 price tag. PlayStation’s solution is that people can buy the existing Disc Drive for PS5 Digital Edition, which will fit on the new console.
There are two issues with that – firstly, it’s an extra £100 or $80, which seems harsh if you want to match your PS5 Disc Edition’s capabilities. Secondly, though, and more pressingly, the Disc Drive is now sold out through basically every major retailer in both the US and UK.
That includes PlayStation’s own Direct store, meaning you really will struggle to find one at present, with a couple of months to go before the PS5 Pro arrives on 7 November. With pre-orders opening on 26 September, this is all quite pressing stuff.
It means that people are faced with the choice of whether to order a PS5 Pro without a Disc Drive sorted to go with it, and that might in turn mean that trading in a PS5 Disc Edition to fund the purchase leaves them unable to play their games on disc in the interim.
It’s a really messy situation, and one can only assume that the run on Disc Drives has caught Sony cold, since its stock seems to have sold out incredibly quickly. Whether it also prompts someone in the PlayStation hierarchy to do some soul-searching about whether the PS5 Pro should be available in a Disc edition is anyone’s guess, though.
This all confirms something that many analysts were predicting immediately after the PS5 Pro’s reveal, though: despite that incredible, eyebrow-raising price, there’s huge demand for Sony’s mid-generation console upgrade. If the Disc Drive has sold out this quickly, one can only assume that PS5 Pro pre-orders might be similarly competitive when they go live in a couple of weeks.
Source Agencies
