Big wait for PlayStation 5 Pro in South Africa

Sony unveiled the PlayStation 5 Pro in early September 2024 with a price tag of $699 in the US, but South African PlayStation fans will have to wait until later this year for local distributor Gamefinity to secure regulatory clearance.

Gamefinity CEO Mario Dos Santos told MyBroadband that it will release pre-order details once it receives certification.

“We are awaiting certification from two regulatory compliance bodies. We are beholden to their timelines; however, we are confident that it will be this side of the year,” Dos Santos said.

“As soon as we have an update from the bodies, we will communicate a pre-order date to the market.”

Gamefinity also posted on the official PlayStation South Africa Facebook page that it was ironing out its supply chain logistics.

“The release date for PlayStation Pro in South Africa will be determined once supply chain logistics have been confirmed and NRCS and Icasa compliance has been secured,” it said in response to a question about pre-order details.

The National Regulator for Compulsory Specifications (NRCS) certifies imports of new electronic devices into the country, and it is a significant contributor to the delays experienced between products launching internationally and their arrival in South Africa.

Various industry stakeholders have told MyBroadband that it can take months to get the letter of authority (LOA) from the NRCS to import new tech to South Africa.

While the PlayStation 5 Pro’s US price of $699 is approximately R12,035 at the current exchange rate, this excludes sales tax and the impact of import duties and forward exchange contracts.

Therefore, the new console will likely carry a significantly higher price tag in South Africa.

Locally, the standard PS5 currently retails for R13,999, which is roughly 63% higher than its $499 price in the US.

If the same 63% margin were to apply to the PlayStation 5 Pro’s $699 price, it would be priced at around R19,620 in South Africa.

The lead architect for PlayStation, Mark Cerny, said the higher-end PlayStation 5 enables games to be played at higher resolutions and faster frame rates without the need for users to switch between modes.

Moreover, the PlayStation 5 Pro offers 45% faster rendering than the standard console.

However, it doesn’t come with a disc drive, reflecting an ongoing video-game industry trend where customers switch from physical media to online services.

Sony will sell a disc drive separately.

A PlayStation blog post said the Pro model will improve the performance of older titles and that “several games will be patched with free software updates for gamers to take advantage of the PlayStation 5 Pro’s features”.

These include Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Hogwarts Legacy, and Spider-Man 2.

“Simply put, it’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built,” Cerny added.

Kota Ezawa, an analyst at Citi, said it appears as though Sony is using the PlayStation 5 Pro’s higher price to boost its gross profit margin.

“The pricing seems extremely challenging, since there has never been a game console whose successor model was substantially more expensive than the original,” Ezawa said.

“We surmise that the components responsible for the improved performance of the PS5 Pro are not all that much more expensive than the components in the original PS5, and thus we expect the higher price of the PS5 Pro to boost the gross margin.”

However, another industry analyst, Serkan Toto, says the company is only targeting hardcore PlayStation games with the PS5 Pro.

“This is about Sony skimming the absolute top end of the market,” said Toto.

“It’s not a mass-market device. It seems the entire gaming world is puzzled about Sony’s pricing strategy.”