Why Sony’s $1200 PS5 Pro is not as ridiculous as you may think

Sony this week revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro, a more powerful version of its popular game console, which will hit stores this November at the nail-chewingly high price of $1200.

The online reaction was immediate and negative, with many questioning the added value of the device (the regular PS5 is $800), or even criticising Sony for daring to produce such an inessential luxury during a cost-of-living crisis. However, annoying though it may be for people with PS5s to see a slightly superior device that they don’t want to pay for, the new machine appears to make decent sense and is likely to sell in line with Sony’s expectations.

The PlayStation 5 has only been on the market for four years, so it would be unrealistic to expect a quantum leap in performance at any price, or for Sony to sell a machine with noticeably more power at a sub-$1000 price point. But the PS5 Pro is not designed to be a successor to the PS5; think of it as more like the Pro model of an iPhone.

In a nine-minute presentation, Sony’s Mark Cerny (lead architect of the PS5 and PS5 Pro) said the company believed the standard PS5 delivered a high level of performance, but the Pro was designed to address the requests of the most demanding developers and players. It has an updated graphics processor that results in 45 per cent faster rendering, an advanced ray tracing pipeline for more realistic lighting and reflections that have less of an impact on performance, and support for Sony’s own AI upscaling solution. Aside from a bigger 2TB storage drive, Wi-Fi 7 support and a lack of a disc drive by default (you can add one for an extra cost), it’s the same as a standard PS5. The main processor, notably, is identical

The end result will differ from game to game but, crucially, you’re likely to see less of a tradeoff when prioritising frame rates. Currently many games offer a 60-frames-per second mode (for smoother movement and more immediate-feeling control), at the cost of visual clarity and effects. The extra GPU power of the Pro, in some games, should let you have both.

Many online reactions have suggested that players would be better off using the $1200 to build a powerful PC for gaming, but that argument is more than a little flawed; a $1200 PC would barely be as performant as the standard PS5, let alone the Pro. For the kind of performance Sony is promising in its new machine, PC builders would be looking at an RTX 4070 graphics card that costs at least $900 on its own. Then they’d need to consider a high-end processor, a very fast 2TB solid-state drive, a motherboard that supports it all, a case and more.

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Additionally, the PS5 Pro will work with thousands of games players may already own across PS4 and PS5, running many of them more smoothly than before, whereas they would have to start a library from scratch on PC. And all versions of PS5 have the standard console advantages of being more stable, easier to hook up to a TV and with better integrated controllers and accessories than a PC.