PS5 Pro at 800€ and iPhone 16 up to 1,969€: The Country That Doesn't Reach

PS5 Pro at 800€ and iPhone 16 up to 1,969€: The Country That Doesn't Reach

Sony has put the digital PS5 Pro at 799.99 euros and Apple has placed its most expensive iPhone 16 at 1,969 euros. Two figures, placed on the table of a country with the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI) at rock bottom, have unleashed a storm of cross-reproaches. Some argue that these are standard global market prices and that the problem is not the console, but the salary that looks at it from outside the showcase. And others respond that it has always been expensive and that what fails is the habit of buying what one cannot afford.

The discussion is not new, but it is unusually concrete: figures appear for comparison, and some are disconcerting.

How much does the PS5 Pro cost and why has it angered so much?

It costs 799.99 euros in its digital version. If the buyer wants to insert discs — which is what everyone has always done with a home console — one must add the external reader, and the package goes to about 920 euros. The standalone reader is around 120 euros. For the amount, the interior does not impress the most technical: inside beats an AMD Zen2 CPU from 2019, an architecture that is already several years old.

The official alternative is always there: an Xbox Series X or a standard PS5 more than cover an average player, and on top of that is the Game Pass catalog. That is the argument repeated most by those who do not understand the indignation. The problem is that consoles have stopped dropping: while the Switch has remained with a cut of barely 30 euros, Xbox and PlayStation have raised their labels by about 50 euros. The old rule that hardware becomes cheaper over the years has been broken.

Games at 80 euros and the calculation in pesetas

Here comes the figure that dismantles half the discussion. In the early nineties, an SNES cartridge cost between 10,000 and 15,000 pesetas, and one of Mega Drive was around 9,000. The usual salary then was about 100,000 pesetas per month. A game therefore ate one-tenth of the monthly salary; today, with 80 euros, it eats quite less. The PS1, launched in 1995 at 59,900 pesetas, would be worth about 750 euros today: practically what a digital PS5 Pro costs.

From there comes the uncomfortable argument: in relative terms, gaming has never been so cheap. Others reply that this does not comfort someone who does not make ends meet, and that the comparison with the nineties ignores that there were fewer fixed expenses, housing weighed less, and there were fewer products competing for the same pocket.

Why has the iPhone 16 become the symbol of the problem?

Because its price ladder is the most visible in the market. The range starts at 959 euros with the 128 GB model and ends at 1,969 euros with the 1 TB Pro Max. The Plus goes from 1,109 to 1,489; the Pro, from 1,219 to 1,849. The complete breakdown, model by model, leaves a very concrete picture of how the range has stretched upwards, to the point that the highest step moves in the territory of a luxury item.

It is not just the price: it is that there is a product segment whose target buyer is not who needs it most, but who wants it to be noticed. The sociological reading circulating is that this premium buys status, not performance, and that the phone acts as a cheap substitute for a social position that the salary does not support.

The sandwich club that went from 6 to 11 euros

While it is discussed whether a console is expensive, daily inflation goes another way. A neighborhood bar, two years without stepping in: the sandwich that cost 6 euros now costs 11. Almost double, and without a special chip or OLED screen. Electronics, by contrast, is one of the few sectors that has barely moved in the last decade. Food, hospitality, and rent rise at a pace that no firmware update corrects.

This asymmetry explains why indignation concentrates on gadgets. It is not that they are more expensive than before; it is that they are the only thing that can be compared precisely, because the price is published and the salary is too.

The salary, not the product

The most repeated conclusion is that the problem is not Sony or Apple. 800 euros today are less than 400 when the euro arrived, and many people earning 1,000 or 1,200 still translate their payslip into quantities from the year 2002 without realizing it. The impression of currency has done the rest: the same nominal figure is worth much less. With the reference SMI, the question “Can I afford it?” has an obvious answer that no one wants to read aloud.

That is where the analysis stalls. Some point to monetary policy and who signs it. Others blame a country that boasts 80 universities and ended up exporting oranges, tourism, and waiters. The most cynical remember that almost all of this ends up being bought anyway, with or without salary, and on installments.