PS5 Pro Unveiling Causes Surge in Disc Drive Purchases

PS5 Pro Announcement Sparks Buying Frenzy for Disc Drives

Yesterday, Sony officially unveiled the PlayStation 5 Pro after months of rumors and leaks. The souped-up console will cost $700, let you play many games at higher frame rates, and doesn’t come with a disc drive. That last part has seemingly led to a lot of people buying up PS5 disc drives, leading in turn to the console accessory selling out on many sites.

On September 10, Sony announced the PS5 Pro and the reaction was a lot of people going, “Holy shit, $700?” mixed with people going “Wait, it doesn’t come with a disc drive?” Nope! Like the Xbox Series S and PS5 Digital Edition, the PS5 Pro doesn’t include a disc drive. But Sony does offer an optional optical drive that you can buy for about $80 and slap onto your PS5. And this drive will work on the PS5 Pro.

Retailers Struggle to Keep Up with Demand

In the 24 hours since the PS5 Pro’s official reveal, it has become harder to buy a PS5 Blu-ray drive. Currently, Amazon, Best Buy, and Target are sold out. Over at Walmart, according to the store’s tracker, 100+ people have bought a PS5 drive in the last day or so. Another 200+ people have it in their cart currently.

Meanwhile, on Amazon, the PS5 disc drive is the fifth best-selling video game-related item and is currently outselling physical copies of Astro Bot.

GameStop and eBay Prices Rise

Not all stores have sold out yet. As of this writing, it seems GameStop still has a few as I was able to add one to my cart and start the purchase process. The official PlayStation store seems to still have them in stock, too. That hasn’t stopped a few people from already trying to flip the disc drive on eBay for more than its retail price.

Pre-orders for the PS5 Pro are planned to go live on September 26. Between now and then I imagine it will only get harder to secure a PS5 disc drive as people planning on getting a PS5 Pro try to buy one now before resellers snatch them up and try to sell them for 5x their retail price. Good luck out there, folks!