Opinion: Sony says it removed the PS5 Pro's disc drive to give consumers more choice, but the firm isn't offering a dual-SKU Pro lineup (one with a disc, and one without). The lack of a disc drive by default is indicative of Sony's push for higher hardware and software sales profits.
Sony, like Microsoft, wants to maximize profits...but unlike Microsoft, Sony is more industrious with its strategies to boost hardware profits (this is partly because no Xbox has ever turned a profit). Microsoft also has far fewer consoles sales than Sony, with Xbox generating just 13% of annual revenue from console sales (Xbox made $2.8 billion from HW from June 2023 - July 2024, compared to Sony's $7.9 billion).
The PS5 Pro's overall design and MSRP is reflective of some very forward-thinking motives for Sony. The Pro isn't just about hardware profit maximization, but also leans into future economics with software, and it's all because of the system's absent disc drive.
In a recent interview with IGN, Sony product manager Toshi Aoki said this about the PS5 Pro going digital by default:
"For the disc drive, it is an option for players. Not all players have discs, even though most players may...but we have the option for being able to add that for those players. So I think it's more of the balance of the value proposition that we're giving."
This implies two things to consumers on a front-facing level: One, that Sony is unwilling to eat the cost of a disc drive and keep the PS5 Pro at $699, and two, that Sony is indeed trying to fully maximize profits on the Pro model.
But the business dynamics offer even more context to Aoki's assertions.
The reality is that Sony has a vested interest in pushing consumers even harder towards digital purchases. Producing physical game discs is a costly process, with manufacturing and worldwide shipping logistics involved as well.
It's a lot easier, and a lot less costly, to just sell a game on the PlayStation Store. There's more profit involved because the costs are down. So digital game sales offer vastly larger profit margins for Sony.
Currently, as of FY23, the digital to physical game sales ratio skews 70% to digital. Sony sold 286.4 million PlayStation games in FY23, of which 200 million were digital, and 86 million were physical. The PS5 Pro going digital by default is an effort to raise the digital count even higher.
And right now, Sony is doubling-down even harder on profit-based decision-making than it has been before. The games industry is currently being squeezed with mass layoffs and high-cost economics of business, as inflation has driven up wages and the costs of not only developing games, but also the internal components to make the consoles (hence the tremendously high $699 PS5 Pro's price).
As a result of these market fluctuations, and internal decisions like game cancellations and the expensive $3.7 billion buyout of Bungie, Sony is being hit by successive quarters of low operating profits with operating margins below double-digits for 8 out of the last 9 quarters.
Profit has always been a priority for Sony Interactive Entertainment and PlayStation, but right now, that stress is even higher. Particularly because it just had to refund Concord and effectively shut the game down, which is a costly process that could culminate in a multi-million write-down.
These macro-economic factors as well as internal company trends are a big reason for the PS5 Pro's price tag. But it's also a big reason why Sony has opted to try to maximize profits of the system by removing the critical disc drive component, and sell it separately for $80.
Making Pro models digital by default pushes consumers more towards digital purchases, especially when they have to deal with the inconvenience of buying a separate product that may A) be in low or limited production by Sony themselves and B) the drives could be sold out across retailers as demand spikes.
In short, the absence of a disc drive is about choice, but not on a value-oriented consumer level. This is a choice by Sony to lay the foundations for a near-all-digital future of gaming, one that maximizes profits while also positioning its PS5 Pro consoles to be closer to profits on day one--if the Pro isn't already profitable at its $699 price point.
If it were truly a value-oriented consumer-driven choice, then Sony could offer two PS5 Pro models in a bid to, well, provide said value choice, as they did with the launch PS5 models.
This move is Sony hitting two birds with one stone to facilitate the future economics of maximized software and hardware profits; the removal of the disc drive makes the systems more profitable because it's one less component that has to be made and shipped, thereby reducing the weight that would have otherwise been there, and the removal of the drive also incentivizes digital sales out of the sake of convenience.
Digital game sales are already more convenient in many ways, and this is just another added layer of manufactured artificial convenience created by Sony in the guise of profit maximization.