With launch just a few short weeks away, the recently revealed PS5 Pro is officially available for pre-order.
The new console boasts an array of improved hardware that’s meant to target 4K gameplay as the standard, along with high framerates and improved raytracing capabilities.
More power, more dollars
Sony revealed the PS5 Pro in a technical showcase with Mark Cerny. The showcase highlighted how the Pro takes existing games and improves their performance, benefits which also apply to selected PS4 games.
Future titles will continue to support both renditions of the PS5, but with Pro versions equipped with notable graphical enhancements. To achieve this, Sony has outfitted the PS5 Pro with a more advanced GPU and faster processing speeds. It’s also equipped with what’s been dubbed as PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR,) which is Sony’s own AI-driven upscaling technology similar to that of AMD Fidelity FX and Nvidia DLSS.
Essentially, it’ll digitally upscale lower resolutions to fully support what a high-resolution display can provide, but without the brute force computing power that eats into framerates.
All of this extra power comes at a steep cost, however. A sticker-shock-inducing USD $700 price tag (before taxes and accessories) puts the Pro firmly high in the ranks as a “premium” machine.
The name of the game
At the time of writing, pre-orders have been live for several hours. Yet, the PS5 Pro remains available on major retailers like Amazon. This is a completely different state of affairs compared to the early days of the initial PS5 launch.
As one might remember, the console was practically impossible to find for months and scalpers took advantage of those circumstances. Some customers paid around the same amount as the new Pro—and then some—just for the previously exclusive privilege of owning a PS5.
Most console launches tend to go like this, and what made the PS5’s situation more precarious was the fact that it came amid the Covid-19 pandemic which crippled the supply and production chains for several months.
To an extent, the effect of that time can still be felt and is arguably reflected in the MSRP of the standard PS5 still not dropping below $499 even now four years after launch. This makes the $699 price tag of the Pro seem all the higher to many consumers.
Sony has been mostly transparent with the sales performance of the platform thus far, so it will be interesting to see what the Pro’s numbers will look like when Sony provides its next financial report at the turn of the next quarter.
Nevertheless, for now, if you want a PS5 Pro, at least you won’t need to search high and low for one. The new system launches on November 7.
