After months of rumors and speculation, the PlayStation 5 Pro has been officially announced, and it will be soon in the hands of players all over the world.
The mid-generation refresh system was officially revealed today with a technical presentation hosted by Mark Cerny. The presentation provided a first look at the console’s capabilities, which will push the visuals in games’ Performance Modes to the level of Fidelity or Quality Modes at 60 frames per second.
During the console’s reveal, the PlayStation Lead System Architect went over what the base model offered, highlighting how the vast majority of players, 75%, pick Performance Mode over Fidelity or Quality Mode. As such, the main goal was to narrow the divide between these two display modes. This is achieved by the PlayStation 5 Pro with three key improvements. The first is the larger GPU, which will offer 45% faster rendering over the base mode with its 67% compute unit increase and 28% faster memory. The second is with advanced ray tracing, which offers double to triple the ray tracing performance of the base made. The third is the AI-driven PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution upscaler, which analyzes images pixel by pixel and reconstructs them to provide better detail while offering smooth framerates.
During the presentation, we also got the first look at multiple titles running on PlayStation 5 Pro, including The Last of Us: Part 2 Remastered, Spider-Man 2, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Gran Turismo 7, and Hogwarts Legacy. In Performance Mode, all games show a definite visual improvement over the base model, with higher resolution, sharper image, and better ray tracing. With all that the system offers, Mark Cerny concluded, the console is the most powerful system from Sony to date.
All this power, however, comes at a hefty cost. At the end of the presentation, it’s been confirmed that the PlayStation 5 Pro will be released on November 7th, 2024, worldwide for the price of $699.99, £699.99, €799.99. This price is definitely going to make it a hard sell in most regions despite its clear advantages over the base model.
Shortly after the presentation ended, Sony provided some additional details on the PlayStation 5 Pro with a post on the Official PlayStation Blog. The console will also come with a PS5 Pro Game Boost mode which will provide enhancements to PS4 games, including higher resolution and more stable performance. Several games will also be patched with free updates to take advantage of the console’s features, which will be identified with a PS5 Pro Enhanced label within their title. Among them are Alan Wake 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, The Crew Motorfest, The First Descendant, The Last of Us Part II Remastered. The console will also launch with the latest wireless technology, Wi-Fi 7, as well as VRR and 8K gaming. The system will also include a 2TB SSD, a DualSense controller, a copy of Astro’s Playroom, and no disc drive,
The PlayStation 5 Pro launches on November 7th worldwide. Pre-orders will open later this month, on September 26th.
