The industry’s best-kept secret is finally out. At a brief event earlier today, PlayStation’s Mark Cerny unveiled the PS5 Pro, a souped-up version of the existing console, and if you want to buy one, you’d better be prepared to sell some of your organs.
The new PS5 Pro will be available on November 7 for a whopping £699/$699, with pre-orders opening on September 26. $499.99.
So, what exactly are you spending your money on? Well, according to the brief, the main goal of the PS5 Pro is to end the current trend of having performance and fidelity modes. In other words, it seeks to combine the 60FPS usually targeted in Performance mode with all the visual effects of Fidelity mode. On paper, this sounds pretty good and delivers on the original promise of this generation of hardware.
It achieves this goal thanks to several factors, starting with a more powerful GPU, which Sony says has “67% more computing units and 28% faster memory than the current PS5.” Overall, this results in a 45% increase in rendering speed.
The more powerful GPU will be helped by PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, the company’s own version upgraded with machine learning.
There’s also new ray tracing technology under the hood, which Sony claims “allows rays to be cast twice, and sometimes three times, as fast as the current PS5 console.” Yes, casting rays does make the PS5 Pro sound like it’s somewhere With an elf hidden away, this would be a really great selling point.
All of this will be packaged in a slightly redesigned case with the same dimensions as the current PS5 slim model. You also get double the storage space (2TB). Yes, Astro’s playroom will come pre-installed.
The Pro doesn’t come with a disc drive, so if you want to play physical media, whether games or 4K movies, you’ll need to spend another £100 on a separate disc drive. Oh, and for some silly reason, the new console doesn’t come with a vertical stand by default, so if you want one you’ll need to spend another £25, for a total of £825.
Will PS5 Pro improve all your old games? Yes, according to Sony. The new PS5 Pro Game Boost will be available for over 8,500 older games on PS5 and PS4.
According to Sony, “This feature may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games. Enhanced image quality for PS4 games may also increase the resolution of some PS4 games.
My assumption is that the enhanced image quality will come from PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution.
As for PS5 Pro games out of the box, Sony has announced a number of games that will be labeled “PS5 Pro Enhanced Editions.”
- Alan Wake 2
- Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
- Demon’s Souls
- Dragon’s Dogma 2
- final fantasy 7 reborn
- GT Racing 7
- Hogwarts Legacy
- Horizon Forbidden West
- Marvel Spider-Man 2
- “Ratchet & Clank: Rift”
- Crew Racing Festival
- first descendant
- “The Last of Us Part 2” Remastered Edition
Now we know – Sony’s new machine will improve performance across the board, but it’ll also cost a lot.
Personally, I was excited before the news was announced, but the asking price means I won’t be buying a PS5 Pro anytime soon.
And you? Are you interested in getting the latest and greatest hardware, or is the price a little too high?
