While many aspects of the PlayStation 5 Pro make it deserving of the ‘Pro’ addition to the console’s name, one limitation of the system is that it comes without a disc drive. This means that players who have collected games on-disc across the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 generations might find themselves unable to play a significant portion of their library if they purchase the newest model. The silver lining is that it’s possible to attach the PlayStation 5 Disc Drive, originally designed for the PlayStation 5 Slim, to the Pro unit. However, even this option has been hampered by limited stock, resulting in a booming scalping market where the peripheral is sold for much more than its retail price.
If you, like myself, have found trying to locate the peripheral like finding a needle in a haystack – here’s a promising lead which I used to track down a copy today. If you have one (or several) JB Hi-Fi stores near where you reside, you may have luck in finding a new PS5 Disc Drive unit at your local store. To check availability, visit the JB Hi-Fi website for the PS5 PlayStation Slim Disc Drive, ignore the ‘Out of stock’ message which is for the online store, and enter your postcode under Getting your item: Enter postcode or suburb. It will then tell you whether your closest store has stock, and if not, the closest store to you which does have stock:
In the South East Queensland area at least, there appears to be quite a few stores with stock at least, so do give it a gander. Do note that they do not appear to support Click & Collect or Delivery, and require you to come in and ask for a PS5 Disc Drive specifically. I’d envision this is to ensure that no more than one unit is given out to any one person, and hopefully not encouraging the scalping trend right now.
Here’s hoping that Sony Interactive Entertainment, like they did with the early stocks of the PlayStation 5, manage to produce enough PS5 Disc Drives so a basic component of all previous generations of gaming consoles, is available on their top-of-the-line flagship PlayStation 5.
