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 Pro will not be a scintillating proposition for the overwhelming majority of existing PS5 owners.

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.

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.

Some commentators have likened the PS5 Pro reveal to the famously shambolic introduction of the PlayStation 3 in 2007, which hit the Australian market at a then-unthinkable $1000. But that comparison’s imperfect too, not only because of inflation ($1000 in 2007 money is more than $1500 in 2023 money, according to RBA data), but because of context.

In 2007 Sony was trying to coax players onto a brand-new platform in the face of a very strong Microsoft alternative, and by allowing the PS3 to blow out so far (it was filled with ultimately unnecessary technology and gimmicks, with an expensive custom processor), it shot itself in the foot. Today Sony already has the large bulk of the market when it comes to high-end consoles, and is offering an ultra-premium alternative to its own system.

Sony’s PlayStation 3 was a big ask, costing twice as much as its rival the Xbox 360 when it launched in 2007.

Existing PS5 owners who have enjoyed the console for years can choose to ignore the PS5 Pro entirely, and continue to play on their perfectly capable system, and Sony won’t bat an eye because that’s still software and services money in its pocket.

You may have a hard time imagining anybody replacing their $800 console with a marginally stronger $1200 one, but that will absolutely happen too. For some people, playing blockbuster games is a primary hobby, and features like better frame rates or a clearer picture can make a big difference if you consider them applied to multiple 100-hour games or a constant stream of graphically intensive campaigns.

Some dedicated gamers have no problem spending $1200 on PC upgrades or a new display every few years to boost their setup’s capabilities because they make use of it constantly. I’m not ashamed to say I’ve spent that much on a video scaler to process the output from my retro systems. Does that mean I’d recommend it for anybody who likes to break out a Nintendo 64 occasionally? Of course not, but there is a market for these highest-end products.

And then there are people who have yet to buy a PS5 at all, who are maybe still on a PS4 Pro or are looking to break into the PlayStation ecosystem for the first time. They might look at the lineup of an $800 powerful console and a $1200 more powerful one, and consider the latter a better investment since every game they buy will run better.

All this said, the PS5 Pro is far from a sure bet right now. Sony’s presentation was too brief and didn’t do a good enough job at explaining the benefits. In its reluctance to paint the standard PS5 as inferior, it only showed off the PS5 Pro’s advantages on games that already run extremely well on the standard console, leaving the new system’s impact on less well functioning games to our imagination.

And there’s also the fact that certain games are just unlikely to be majorly improved, either because they already run as well as their designs allow on PS5, or because they’re limited by CPU. For example many gamers might consider a hardware upgrade ahead of Grand Theft Auto 6 next year, but given Rockstar’s previous games (with huge open world and complex simulations) have struggled to run at 30 frames per second, it’s tough to imagine its new game making it to 60 on PS5 Pro.

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