Sony’s new PlayStation 5 Pro appears to be very powerful. But at $700 — plus another $80 if you want to buy the disc drive accessory since the console itself doesn’t have one — a lot of gamers have been left wondering exactly how powerful it needs to be in order to justify the cost.

On this episode of The Vergecast, we try to figure out why the PS5 Pro has the specs and price tag it does and what this new console might tell us about the overall state of the gaming business. Around the same time as Sony’s announcement, Microsoft said it was laying off another 650 Xbox employees — these are two companies with very different ideas about the same business, and it’s not always obvious who’s right.

After we finish with our PS5 Pro chat, we talk about the other gadget news of the week. We also talk a bit about the reaction to Monday’s Apple event, after briefly forgetting that it happened this week at all. We discuss Huawei’s Mate XT, the triple-folding smartphone that excited people in all the ways the iPhone 16 didn’t. We get very excited about the multi-window future of Android. And we consider two simultaneous Google stories: the excellent Pixel Watch 3 and the potentially company-shaking ad tech trial. Google is winning. Google is in peril. Google, as ever, continues to Google.

Finally, in the lightning round, we talk about big trucks, AI podcasts, the future of WhatsApp, and more.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the PS5 Pro:

• PS5 Pro: all the news about Sony’s next console
• Sony’s PS5 Pro has a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaling
• Sony’s new PS5 heralds the end of disc drives
• Here are all the games enhanced by the PS5 Pro
• Come pixel-peep what the PS5 Pro can maybe actually do
• PlayStation 5 Pro comparison: what’s different from the regular PS5?
• The people want disc drives

And in other gadget news:

• From Spyglass: Apple Needs an Editor
• Google tests desktop windowing for Android tablets
• No, Kamala Harris wasn’t wearing these audio earrings
• Huawei’s new trifold phone costs more than a 16-inch MacBook Pro
• Here’s a closer look at the Huawei Mate XT triple-screen foldable
• Google and the DOJ’s ad tech fight is all about control

And in the lightning round:

• Alex Cranz’s pick: The US finally takes aim at truck bloat
• David Pierce’s pick: WhatsApp will send messages to other apps soon — here’s how it will look
• Nilay Patel’s pick: Google is using AI to make fake podcasts from your notes
• Nilay’s other pick: Facebook and Instagram are making AI labels less prominent on edited content