PS5 Pro reveal: the hardware looks capable but the demos were lacking

In the last article I wrote for Eurogamer, I wondered how Sony would tackle the challenge of marketing a premium version of the PlayStation 5 when the standard PS5 – arguably – already commands a premium price-point which hasn’t shifted substantially since its launch four years ago. The answer was surprisingly simple: users love 60fps performance modes, so why not serve that up with enhanced quality comparable to today’s 30fps fidelity modes? It’s an elegant solution for presenting a higher-end piece of hardware without making the standard model look lacking.

Beyond that, the marketing became significantly less convincing, culminating in a price-point that’s so high, few saw it coming. We have entered the age of the £699/$699 console, rising to an astonishing €800 for our friends in Europe. This price rises even further if you actually want to run your existing library of physical games on it as you’ll need to invest £99/$79/€99 in an optical drive to run them.

Lead system architect Mark Cerny took center stage in revealing PlayStation Pro – a good move from Sony. Cerny presents with an understated by intense passion for technology, shown at its best for the reveals of PlayStation 4 and its successor. However, this time around, he was not given the time to deliver any kind of deep dive into what makes the PS5 Pro architecture so clever. Instead, we get edited highlights, if you like, condensing the Pro’s key features into a ‘Big Three’ – a larger, more powerful GPU, enhanced ray tracing and machine learning hardware used for upscaling. Bearing in mind that PS5 Pro will be appealing to the high-end enthusiast that’s thirsty for technical detail, the barebones nature of the presentation just didn’t make sense.

• 0:00:00 Overview
• 0:01:20 How is Sony marketing the PS5 Pro?
• 0:09:43 Big three features: larger GPU, machine learning and ray tracing enhancements
• 0:25:10 The missing disk drive
• 0:33:12 $700 USD sticker shock: does it make sense?
• 0:44:23 What do we want to see out of PS5 Pro?
• 0:49:43 Supporter Q1: Was Microsoft right to skip an enhanced console this generation?
• 0:54:06 Supporter Q2: Is GT7’s 8K mode as stupid as it sounds?
• 0:57:26 Supporter Q3: Which PC GPU is the best match for PS5 Pro?
• 1:00:27 Supporter Q4: Will Sony encourage developers to stick to a single PS5 Pro mode, or have multiple?
• 1:02:58 Supporter Q5: Why doesn’t the PS5 Pro have a larger CPU upgrade?

A nine minute presentation is lacking already but as I imagined it would be the case, the discussion had to begin with a reassurance that the standard PS5 is still a great machine – precious minutes were spent there before we actually got to the topic at hand. Bearing in mind Mark Cerny’s skill in evangelizing gaming technology, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. The lack of press hands-on opportunities (as there were for PS4 Pro in the wake of the 2016 PlayStation Meeting) meant that there’s a void of information only filled in with existing leaks from the PS5 developer portal, with no accompanying context from the man that led the team that created this new hardware.

Game demonstrations followed, but there was still the sense that Sony held back. In concentrating mostly on its own titles, the dramatic enhancements we expect to see from PSSR upscaling were relatively muted – image quality from first-party titles isn’t actually that much of an issue. Meanwhile, the comparisons we did see were compromised by YouTube’s inability to hold detail and a bizarre editing decision that actually saw zooming out on detail as opposed to zooming in (ok, on reflection it looks to be more of a cropping technique – but even so it doesn’t help in highlighting the differences that much). We know from our analytics that over half of our audience watches our content on smartphones. We get some criticism for zooming in on detail, but it’s a mechanism to emphasize the points we are making based on how the viewer sees the content. As things stand, we know from the success of Nvidia DLSS how transformative machine learning-based upscaling can be – but you didn’t see it in the presentation.

Enhanced ray tracing? Obviously, Digital Foundry has been excited to discuss the technology since the emergence of RT hardware in consumer GPUs back in 2018. The best example Sony had to offer was the inclusion of RT reflections in Gran Turismo 7 – hopefully at 4K resolution. Beyond that though, an enhancement to Hogwarts Legacy was less impressive, with RT reflections that looked grainy and lacking in detail. Hogwarts uses Unreal Engine 4’s RT features – a first effort from Epic which has since been surpassed. I believe it’s actually Unreal Engine 5 games that should be transformed on PS5 Pro, but we didn’t get to see any of them.

With better examples, I feel a case could be made for PS5 Pro – but confirmation that the same CPU remains in the new machine is a disappointment, although an expected one. With a focus on 60 frames per second as the key marketing point for the Pro, we can expect PSSR and the extra GPU muscle to do the heavy lifting, but that won’t help games like Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 hit a consistent 60fps . Nor would I expect simulation-heavy games necessarily limited to 30fps to be able to suddenly run at 60fps. Sony didn’t confirm it, but developer documents reveal a 10 percent boost to CPU clocks is available – good for stabilizing performance on CPU-limited titles not quite able to sustain 60fps, but not really useful elsewhere. I still expect GTA6 to be a 30fps game barring some kind of technological miracle and there’s no enabling technology in PS5 Pro to change that.

The end of the Cerny briefing gave us the price-point and form factor and left us on a downer. The price-points are a good £100/$100 higher than expected, but the lack of a Blu-ray drive compounds the issue. We should expect PS5 Pro to appeal to the true PlayStation loyalist who wants to play their library with the best possible experience – but that experience is locked out to users who’ve bought their games on disc, requiring the purchase of an overpriced add-on . While 2TB of storage is a good upgrade over the standard model, it doesn’t make up for the lack of a disc drive, nor does it address the anti-logic a Pro model lacks a key feature found on the £200/$200 cheaper model.

This looks to be some kind of halfway house before consoles migrate to an all-digital future, but the pluses do not outweigh the minuses: game preservation becomes problematic while the consumer faces less choice in where they buy their games and how they can share or resell them – but PS5 Pro takes us one step closer to the slippery slope.

As for the price itself, it’s clearly too high and I have a theory about this. Four years into the current console generation, the official asking price for the PlayStation 5 remains the same as it was in 2020. There have been cost reductions in how the machine is made, culminating in last year’s ‘Slim’ model. However, these reductions have been offset by rampant inflation and the fact that the latest processor manufacturing technologies no longer deliver both higher transistor density and lower pricing. The latter is the whole reason why Xbox Series S exists. Our big interview with Microsoft from 2020 laid out the issue that Xbox saw no way to cost-reduce Series X to an acceptable degree, seeing them make a cheaper machine for day one. Sony would have had the same visibility on certain costs, yet chose to pursue the PS5 Pro project regardless.

At the same time, the very nature of PS5 Pro as a more niche, enthusiastic console means that subsidizing the cost of that hardware makes no sense whatsoever as it will not be bringing new users into the PlayStation platform – the chances are that the audience will be existing PS5 owners already invested into the ecosystem.

So, the concept of a £699/$699/€799 console is likely explained by the notion that Sony is looking to at least recover its costs with the hardware or better yet, actually make money from it. The end result is the staggering price we see before us – but does this signal the fate of the console? I’d argue that it depends on sales expectations. I expect PS5 Pro to sell out – but all consoles do at launch, owing to low availability and FOMO. The real question is whether PS5 vs PS5 Pro delivers the same 80/20 split in sales that PS4/PS4 Pro delivered across their life cycle. Sony would have seen that ratio as a best case scenario for the new model – but the price point certainly makes this target much more challenging.

And more than that, the last-gen ‘pro’ consoles also saw price increases that set the stage for the most expensive hardware of today. If that trend continues and PS6 costs the same as PS5 Pro, inevitably a majority of the audience will be priced out of console gaming – and that’s exceptionally worrying. It’s no wonder that Xbox seems to be looking to align more closely with the PC platform. Whether it’s down to competition or simply the fact that a PC can do more than a console, price increases don’t seem to have made too much of a dent on the format’s popularity – and perhaps that’s why Xbox is looking to more closely align with that platform.

Speaking of PC, I’m seeing some commentary suggesting that users may be better served by investing in PC hardware instead. You’d need a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 system with something like an RTX 4070 to produce a technologically superior PC, which may well be a challenge. However, I feel these arguments miss the point. PS5 Pro is aimed at an enthusiast PlayStation enjoyer. Inevitably, this user has an existing library that they want to keep as opposed to starting from scratch on PC.

More to the point, the console still plays a different role: until Microsoft provides a new version of Windows that provides as seamless an experience as a console does, we’re nowhere near comparing like with like. The PC still lacks the out-of-the-box experience that works with a joypad on a living room display. I expect either Xbox or Steam – or both – to address this in the fullness of time and at that point, we may well be looking at the final convergence of PC and console hardware.

As for PS5 Pro, Sony still has it all to prove. The fundamental building blocks are there for a premium PlayStation experience, but the reveal did little to showcase the improvements. An accompanying CNET feature actually seemed to raise more questions than answers and perhaps Digital Foundry can play a role here. And beyond the new features, I’d certainly like to see the Pro’s enhanced back compat features put to the test. Elden Ring finally running at a locked 60 frames per second? Yo think it should be possible.