We love you, Sony PlayStation. Really. Despite your love of money the craft, helping studios build these fully-fledged worlds complete with real, personal stakes (and Concord) we still can’t swallow the bonkers price of the newly announced PS5 Pro. Oh, you haven’t heard? Sony’s ‘Pro’ upgrade will set you back $700 (R12,500).
As for what it’ll cost by the time it arrives in South Africa… we’d rather not ruin our Wednesday thinking about it.
But wait, it does get worse. Sony’s official PS5 Pro announcement served as a stark reminder that physical media is dying and that these big corporations are the ones killing it. The $700 PS5 Pro, reaching as high as €800 (R15,800) in Europe, ditches the disc drive entirely and forces yet another R3,000+ purchase to go “retro”.
Apple, what have you done?
“Vertical Stand sold separately”
We might have been able to overlook the overly presumptuous starting price if Sony could back it up in the hardware department. After watching Sony’s lead architect on the PS5 and PS5 Pro quickly recap the current PS5 (reminding us that we’re more than happy with the now four-year-old console) before attempting to play a broken game of Spot the Difference. The jokes on us, we guess. The differences were… slim.
We’re obviously joking – from a more technical standpoint, Sony’s put up some great numbers – rather than offering up any massive visual differences. The biggest change? No longer will you have to make the Sophie’s Choice of playing at 60fps with a lower graphical fidelity, over a middling 30fps and better reflections.
Specifically, Sony’s punting an improved GPU with 67% more compute units than the original PS5, and “28% faster memory.” ‘Advanced Ray Tracing’ is a thing now, too, allowing “the rays to be cast at double, and at times triple, the speeds of the current PS5 console,” Sony’s blog said. Well? Which is it?
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Possibly the bit that got the biggest laugh was Cerny saying the words “PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution,” while keeping a straight face. That’s the latest almost mandatory attempt to slip artificial intelligence (AI) into every product released post-2022. It uses machine learning to upscale the image, filling in the gaps and providing “super sharp image clarity.”
Finally, there’s ‘PS5 Pro Game Boost’, which confirms that roughly 8,500 PS4 games will be playable on the PS5 Pro. We weren’t worried that wouldn’t be the case before we saw the announcement. ‘Enhanced Image Quality’ will bring some of those PS4 games up to scratch, graphically. Oh, and WiFi 7 is coming.
Sony is simply testing the waters, and it’s up to consumers to vote with their wallets.