Sony launched the much anticipated PlayStation 5 Pro console today. As you can probably tell from the naming, it’s a more powerful version of the PS5. The “beefy” console was unveiled during a special technical presentation livestream event hosted by none other than Mark Cerny, the lead architect behind the PS5. Though unlike Cerny’s previous showcases, this one was pretty short and concise, not a full technical deep-dive so to say.
Maybe because, much of the PS5 Pro builds on the existing PS5. So, technically, it’s not a next-generation console. It’s a mid-cycle refresh on the lines of the PS5 Slim. There the main focus was on reducing the footprint without compromising on graphical performance. Here, the idea is to offer even better performance and the size of the console shown today seems like, it’s building on the Slim model rather than the original which is to say that it seems pretty compact. The catch is that there is no disc drive.
Sony PlayStation 5 Pro: The technical lowdown
Anyhow, Cerny highlighted the three core tenets behind the PlayStation 5 Pro and explained why it exists. Apparently, gamers have been asking Sony to bump up the GPU so they won’t have to choose between performance and fidelity modes in games. According to Cerny, “Players are choosing performance about three quarters of the time,” which obviously comes at the cost of resolution and detail. The PS5 Pro is built to remove or at least reduce that bottleneck by packing a larger GPU (while keeping the same CPU as the PS5).
More specifically, you get 67 percent more compute units inside it than the PS5. The graphics memory, too, has been increased by 28 percent. All this results in 45 percent faster rendering on the PS5 Pro compared to the original PS5—a significant boost in performance. In the real-world, it means more detail and better frame rate in games.
Ray-tracing is also getting a boost on the PS5 Pro which should allow developers to cast rays at double or triple the speed of the current PS5 entailing more realistic lighting and shadows in games. Last but not the least, Sony is touting its Nvidia DLSS or AMD FSR like custom AI-driven upscaling technology called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution for enhancing detail and clarity in games even further.
The PlayStation 5 Pro will be available starting November 7 at a price of USD 699.99 (roughly Rs 58,800). Unless Sony pulls a rabbit out of its hat, it should arrive in India not sooner than early 2025.