Right, so, I’ve convinced myself I need a PS5 Pro, but how cheap can I make it? This investigation will shock you

I’ve gone through what I can only describe as emotional and financial turmoil over the PS5 Pro. My brain flicks between absolutely refusing to buy it and insisting I must buy it every other second I’m awake.

It’s been a hard time, for me personally, as I worked through these very important issues. The good news is that I’ve found a solution and I’m sharing it with you now. I’ve figured out how to get a PS5 Pro without spending a penny! All you need to do is go through the same mental gymnastics I’m about to explain.

Get rid of your existing PS5. As we’re talking about the most hardcore of the hardcore – power gamers in the extreme – here, I’m going to assume that you were an early adopter and have an original disc drive model PS5. Unless the PS5 is in a right terrible state, you should get around £275 for it.

Add on £25 for a DualSense controller that you have sat around just in case a mate comes over to play, but they never do. That takes us to £300 and we’ve only just got started.

Let’s face it, you likely have a huge backlog in your games library. You don’t need to buy any more games at the moment, so save the cash and put it towards the PS5 Pro. I’ve picked a few upcoming games you do not need to buy. Your life will be fine without them in your collection.

Let’s use digital store prices as we’re not forking out for a PS5 Pro plus a disc drive. Them’s the rules. I don’t make them. I just enforce the ones that make sense.

EA FC25 is out very soon and, well, you don’t need it. Simple. Just play last year’s game if you must have that football hit. £70 saved. Add on £20 saved that you’d splurge on Ultimate Team. That’s also going to make you hate yourself a bit less as you’d only pack some try-hards anyway.

Sonic X Shadow Generations can do one. If you’ve been eyeing this up because people have said it’s good, grow up! Be sensible, Sonic is mostly terrible and you’ve already played a version of this ages ago. If you must get a Sonic fix you most likely own five or six previous 6/10 games starring the hedgehog. £45 in the kitty.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is the big one. Yes, OK, you might claim that you don’t buy Call of Duty because it’s not been good for about 10 years and it’s beneath you to play such a game with the plebs who buy it every year. To that I say, this line of reasoning doesn’t work with my article, so you were going to buy it, got it?!

Instead of buying it, play it on Game Pass. So you might be someone who doesn’t care for Game Pass, but because I’m desperate to make this article work I’m going to say you have a Game Pass sub and a PC or Xbox to use. That’s £70 saved. I don’t know how much skins or whatever in CoD cost, but you’d probably have blown another £20 on some kind of cosmetic.

That’s £225 you haven’t spent in the next couple of months. Thank me later, but the important point is that that brings our total savings to £525.

Time to start scraping the barrel for savings. It’s about seven weeks until the PS5 Pro launches on November 7. Let’s look at things you buy every week.

Starbucks caramel macchiato is about £5 and until the launch of the PS5 Pro you’re going to buy two a week. Don’t buy them and save £70.

I go through about five bottles of Oat Milk a week. Oatly Barista is £2.20 a bottle at the moment, whereas Lidl’s Barista Oat Milk is just £1.39. Let’s say that’s a saving of 80p per bottle, which is about £33.60 saved over the seven weeks.

Who doesn’t like a cheeky takeaway once a week? I do. Mine cost a fortune because of children, but I won’t assume you live my perfect life. A curry for one, please, chinese the week after, pizza the next week… you get the idea. £25 a week, but let’s skip three of the seven weeks until the Pro launches and we’ve saved another £75. With these small sacrifices over the next couple of months we’ve banked another £178.60.

I can feel your excitement rising as you look back and do some very simple maths in your head. And you’re right. We’ve hit the £700 target. In fact, we’ve now got a kitty of £703.60.

Can you believe it? I should have put this into an ebook and charged people £5 a pop for it. “How to get a PS5 Pro free”. Yet I’ve given you the secret and all you’ve given in return is a few ad impressions (if you’ve not got an ad-blocker installed). You’re welcome.