While people across the internet are reeling over the PlayStation 5 Pro’s $700 price tag, the company has announced it’ll start selling used PlayStation 5 consoles at a discount.
Sony has a new “PlayStation 5 Certified Refurbished” program on its PlayStation Direct store that offers consoles and DualSense controllers for less than their launch prices. Multiple colors of the DualSense will sell for $60, the regular PS5 for $400, and the PS5 Digital Edition for $350.
For reference, the PS5 launched in 2020 for $500, while the Digital Edition cost $400. The DualSense cost $70. So these aren’t gigantic discounts. We also don’t know when the products will start shipping through the refurbished program; the Direct site just says “coming soon.” We’ll update this article when we learn more.
Plus, to reiterate, these are used consoles, but Sony uses the term “refurbished” because, as the store page states: “Every PlayStation certified refurbished product completes a rigorous recertification process that includes full testing that meets the same functional standards as new PlayStation products.”
This means that whatever you buy should work as new and have everything that would typically be included in the box, even if it might come with a couple scuffs. Each refurbished product also comes with a one-year limited warranty, so you can contact PlayStation support and return it if you run into any problems (outside you destroying it yourself, of course).
This might be a deal worth considering for those who haven’t purchased a PS5 yet and were turned off by the higher prices for new consoles currently on the market. In 2022, Sony said that it would be raising the price of the consoles due in part to “high global inflation rates.” It didn’t introduce price hikes in the U.S., but with the introduction of the PlayStation 5’s sleeker redesign, it did raise the cost of the digital edition — from $400 to $450. While the regular PS5 Slim still cost $500, it came with a detachable disc drive. The base PS5 you can soon grab refurbished is a safe way to get a console with an included disc drive.
Sony also recently made DualSense controllers more expensive, raising the price from $70 to $75 for the standard model.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.