Sony has unveiled the PlayStation 5 ProThe new console will arrive on November 7, 2024, and will retail for $699.99.
The PS5 Pro will feature three key upgrades, including a larger GPU for rendering that is up to 45 percent faster than the base model. Sony has also made major upgrades to ray tracing, adopting a “simplified and accelerated approach that allows rays to be calculated at double or even triple the speed of the PS5.”
Finally, the company added custom hardware for machine learning via an AI library called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), which analyzes game images pixel by pixel and is able to “add an extraordinary amount of detail that increases the effective resolution of games.”
Explaining why Sony specifically focused on these areas, Mark Cerny, the PS5's architecture lead, said the company wanted to satisfy developers' “desire for more graphics performance.” He said the PS5 Pro will reduce the need for developers and players to choose between performance mode and graphics mode.
“When asked to decide on a mode, players choose 'performance' at least three-quarters of the time. Eliminating that decision, or narrowing that split, is a key goal for PlayStation 5 Pro,” he said. “We wanted to give players the graphics that game creators aspire to, at the higher frame rates that gamers typically prefer.”
He added that PS5 developers are already working on adding PS5 Pro support to existing titles such as The Last of Us – Part II, Forbidden Horizon West, Gran Turismo 7AND Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to improve performance across the board. The new titles will also support PS5 Pro.
In terms of how those older versions will benefit from the extra firepower, Cerny said that “the goal of delivering near-fidelity graphics at a 'performance' frame rate has been achieved across a wide range of [older] titles.”
Comparing the PS5 Pro experience to the PS5's “Performance Mode,” he said players will be able to see a noticeable “difference in detail.” He said the Pro is “much sharper and more defined” than its predecessor, and said distant details and fine details will be much clearer as a result.
Lighting and visual effects should also get a boost thanks to that expanded GPU, allowing for titles like Gran Turismo 7 to add ray-traced reflections without compromising its 60 frames-per-second target. “Simply put, it’s the most powerful console ever built,” Cerny added, “and a worthy addition to the PS5 family.”
Will the PlayStation 5 Pro revive Sony's hardware sales?
This isn’t the first time Sony has refreshed its PlayStation hardware lineup mid-cycle. The company launched a PlayStation 4 Pro to add more power to its last-gen machine. Microsoft has also taken a similar approach, beefing up its Xbox One lineup with the launch of the more powerful Xbox One X and the slimmer Xbox One S.
The PlayStation 5 had sold over 56 million units worldwide as of April 30, 2024. The current-generation console was launched on November 12, 2020, but sales appear to be has already started to slip away.
According to Sony's latest fiscal report, PS5 hardware sales totaled 2.4 million units during the first quarter of fiscal 2024, down from 3.3 million units in the first quarter of fiscal 2023. The decline was not unexpected. In March, Sony's senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka told Bloomberg expected annual PS5 hardware sales to lose momentum, and even indicated that the console was entering the “final stage of its lifecycle.”
“We will place more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales,” Matsuoka added. “As a result, we expect the pace of annual sales of PS5 hardware to begin to decline starting next fiscal year.”
It will be interesting to see if the launch of the PlayStation 5 Pro can change the narrative.