Sony has announced a new, faster and more expensive version of its gaming console as they desperately chase down growth in a market that is moving away from console gaming in favour of PC’s.
The PlayStation 5 Pro will be available for purchase on Nov. 7 and cost over $1,000 in Australia, this is an increase of $300 over their standard console currently being sold by the likes of JB Hi Fi and EB Games.
The big difference is that users get improved resolutions and higher frame-rates without the need to toggle between different modes.
According to Mark Cerny, lead architect of the new PlayStation 5 Pro it will offer 45% faster rendering than the standard PlayStation 5.
“Simply put, it’s the most powerful console we’ve ever built,” Cerny said.
The big three additions are a larger graphics processing unit, advanced ray tracing techniques, and AI-driven upscaling, with Sony engineers hoping to deliver better graphics at 60 frames per second.
The PS5 Pro comes as a digital-only model as standard, but owners will be able to buy a disc drive (already available separately) and attach it.
Other features include Wi-Fi 7 as well as support for VRR and 8K resolutions. It comes with a 2TB SSD.
According to Game Industry BIZ currently, most first-party PS5 titles offer players the option of fidelity mode (more detail, but capped at 30fps) or performance mode (running at 60fps, but less detail). Cerny said that around three quarters of PlayStation players choose the latter, and removing this divide has become a key priority for Sony.
In a blog post, the company said that the new console will improve the performance of older titles and that “several games will be patched with free software updates for gamers to take advantage of PS5 Pro’s features” including Hogwarts Legacy, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Spider-Man 2.
In addition the new Pro includes custom hardware for machine learning that enables the AI–driven upscaling, which Sony is referring to as PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (or PSSR).
This “analyses game images pixel by pixel and adds an extraordinary amount of detail” to boost resolution claims Sony.
