Are Telstra’s PlayStation 5 deals good value?

Telstra has announced that it’s going to start offering the PlayStation 5 console from the 26th of March – but are the Big T’s deals good value?

For some years now, Telstra’s been rather firmly in the Microsoft Xbox camp, offering up Xbox consoles on outright or contract terms.

No, it hasn’t said if some kind of exclusive Microsoft period has expired or anything of the sort. It’s just going to start selling Sony gear alongside Microsoft equipment in its stores and online.

Fun, ancient trivial fact: Telstra got its start in console sales in Australia with the Sega Dreamcast, which is why there’s a Telstra BigPond logo on the box. Why? Because it had a modem, that’s why.

If you were playing Chu Chu Rocket online from Australia back in the day, it was probably via Telstra.

What’s the Telstra PlayStation 5 like, value-wise?

There’s really very few surprises here, because rather like phone “contracts” these days, there’s not much in the way of subsidy for signing up for a console whether you pay it off over 12 or 24 months, though it is marginally cheaper than buying it outright… and the margin ain’t much.

For PlayStation 5 consoles, you’ll save $1.04 whether you pay it off over one year or two years. For the PlayStation Portal you’re saving a whopping 8c over 12 months or 20c over 24 months.

The appeal here, 100% if you need it, is that you’re not stumping up that full purchase price outright. Or, I guess, that you may be able to buy one from a physical Telstra store, though it’s been a long, long while since there were real retail shortages of PlayStation 5 consoles.

Do you get other goodies like PlayStation Plus subscriptions thrown into the deal?

Nope. PlayStation Plus will cost extra, and you should bear in mind that the PlayStation Portal only works off an existing PlayStation 5 console that you already own – so there’s little point buying just the Portal unless you fancy staring at a blank screen a whole lot.

Telstra will also sell the DualSense Wireless controllers for PlayStation 5, but at effective full retail price. You really don’t have to shop around that hard to find those at least a little cheaper – look, here they are on Amazon* for $10 less than RRP.

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