Sony announced the PlayStation 5 Pro to huge interest, but not all of that was positive. The big sticking point, of course, is the steep $ 699.99 price, but there’s another looming issue that just snowballed.
In the original PlayStation 5 Pro announcement from September, Sony said this:
“We kept the look of the PS5 Pro consistent with the overall PS5 family of products.
You’ll notice the height is the same size as the original PS5, and the width is the same size as the current PS5 model to accommodate higher performance specs.
Players can add an Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Drive, or swap out console covers when they become available.”
So, Sony themselves set expectations that the PlayStation 5’s covers would work on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Or did they? The wording on this announcement was not clear enough that consumers, and even the press, interpreted it in different ways.
Redditor Zrorro made a post on the PlayStation subreddit, with accompanying pictures. We’ll let them explain it in their words:
“I had some Cobalt blue plates so I decided to try them out on the Pro and I can confirm the bottom plates match the slim however the top plates do not match because while they’re physically the same size.
The teeth that connect to the system are and slightly different places. So you can’t connect the top part. I’m only telling you all this so y’all know and don’t bother ordering plates for the slim to use on the Pro.”
Just to be clear, Zrorro tried to use the PlayStation 5 slim model covers on the PlayStation 5 Pro. As you can see in this store listing in PlayStation Direct, there is a single line across the front, that separates that cover into two. So that’s why Zrorro thought that it could work.
If we were honest about this, this is a comparatively minor issue. You don’t need to have your console to be a specific color to play games on it, and gamers can customize their consoles if they wanted to by themselves.
It’s an issue because it ties into the PlayStation 5 Pro’s steep asking price, aggravating gamers who feel they were priced out even more. And it is arguably an issue that Sony created themselves, choosing to do things like selling a vertical stand for the console separately.
Sony did share an official statement regarding this issue to IGN:
“PS5 console covers are not compatible with PS5 Pro. However, players will be able to swap out different console covers for PS5 Pro when they become available in the future.”
Sony’s wording suggests that they will make a completely different set of PlayStation 5 Pro cover plates. We hope they can come up with new designs that work across different models, because this seems needlessly wasteful to the environment, and also just creates more consumer friction.
In any case, for those of you who could afford and did buy a PlayStation 5 Pro, Sony has promised compatible plates in the future. For what its worth, Dbrand did risk litigation to make third party PlayStation 5 covers, dubbed Darkplates, but they also don’t seem to have one ready for the PlayStation 5 Pro either. So maybe this will be a race for consumers between Sony and accessory makers now.
