Bloomberg mentions about Sony's PS5 Pro console, price & release date.....

[PC Engine Fan X!]

Yesterday, 9/10/2024, Bloomberg mentioned a 411 nugget of Sony's upcoming Playstation 5 Pro console with a MSRP of $699.99 usd and will be available 11/07/2024 at retailers nationwide (stateside, that is). PS5 designer/creator Mark Cerny has said that this particular PS5 hardware is the most powerful one that he's designed/built from the ground up (makes me wonder if it's more powerful than the Xbox Series X console as it is? -- Microsoft still hasn't updated it's Series X hardware since it's initial November 2020 console debut release -- that's a given). There's the seamless transition from 60fps to 120fps if your TV or gaming monitor supports it.

Gran Turismo supports the PS5 Pro's increased hardware capabilities with it's "Pro Enhanced Games lineup" (with a hefty patch update download, of course). According to Sony, the PS5 Pro comes with 2TB of storage as standard (including the use of ultra high speed SSD). It'd be interesting to compare screenshots of GT running on a regular PS5 & on a PS5 Pro setup simultaneously (is it truly worth paying the asking $700 for a PS5 Pro is the real question to ask).

It wasn't until May of 2023, roughly 2.5 years later, that it was easier to buy a regular PS5 disc-based console off of Amazon with Sony's ramped up production of PS5 to catch up with "supply & demand-wise." Prior to that timeline, it was "slim pickings" trying to beat the bots whenever Amazon & Walmart would get in their alloted shipment of PS5 consoles to sell (only to have them sold out in a matter of minutes/seconds leading to some angry & pissed off potential PS5 buyers) -- true story, folks. Nowadays, in September of 2024, it's no problem to buy either an Series X or PS5 as they are easier to find at retail -- it wasn't like that back in November of 2020 during the initial debuts of both the Series S/X & PS5 gaming consoles though -- far from it (not to mention the "computer chip shortage" issue back in 2022 hampering the manufacturing of PS5s during that point in time).

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On the Bloomberg Technology show, 9-11-2024, it's been revealed that pricing for the PS5 Pro for the international gaming market scene are listed as follows (with a worldwide release date of 11-07-2024):

USA - $699.99
UK - £699
EU - €799
Japan - 199800 yen
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The PS5 Pro will not come shipped with a disc drive and is an additional $79.99 usd add-on if you want it (otherwise the PS5 Pro has the shape & form factor of a PS5 Slim and can be used as an all-digital based PS5 console). A 2TB SSD is already pre-installed from the "get-go." An optional stand to place the PS5 Pro horizontally is another additional $24.99 usd. So altogether, a PS5 Pro with a disc drive and a horizontal stand is already north of the $800 pricepoint (not including sales tax either) -- it's quite a pricey top tier gaming console as it is. Bloomberg also mentioned that the PS4 Pro's sales counted for 14% of it's overall lifetime sales of the PS4 console (and says that figure will likely apply to the possible sales of the upcoming PS5 Pro down the road).

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[mrsmiley381]

Yesterday I was walking around a Wal-Mart, saw that they had PS5's in stock, and asked myself, "Oh, but do they they have the PS5 Pro in stock? Hah, not like those exist yet." Then I saw the announcement from the prior day. Pretty funny.
Best I can say about this console for my use case is that it might let me play PS4 games from a decade ago at the absolute smoothest frame rate. Not that I really have much time. I guess playing some Oneechanbara, Metal Gear, and Resident Evil (with VR headsets, of course, so tack on some more expenses jfcwtfbbq) is what I'm expecting. Considering I got a Diablo-themed Xbox Series X last Christmas season and played Ninja Gaiden II for about two hours at most I think I should wait for at least a price drop or two.

[Josh128]

Best I can say about this console for my use case is that it might let me play PS4 games from a decade ago at the absolute smoothest frame rate.

Not unless you purchase an extra $80 optical disc drive in addition to the already expensive PS5 Pro.

[jd213]

Most (all?) of the PS5 exclusives seem to be eventually coming to Steam, so if one is patient you can just play them that way.

By the time I got around to playing some of these games, the PS6 or PS7 would probably be out, plus it would be infinitely more economical to get a better gaming PC...

[BazookaBen]

I guess playing some Oneechanbara, Metal Gear, and Resident Evil (with VR headsets, of course, so tack on some more expenses jfcwtfbbq) is what I'm expecting

I wouldn't expect any of the games to get any sort of performance upgrade. If they didn't get one for PS5 (outside of the boost mode that is also on PS4 Pro), then they won't get one on PS5 Pro.

[Kez]

I wouldn't expect any of the games to get any sort of performance upgrade. If they didn't get one for PS5 (outside of the boost mode that is also on PS4 Pro), then they won't get one on PS5 Pro.

They do seem to be promising some additional PS4-related features, here:

Other enhancements include PS5 Pro Game Boost, which can apply to more than 8,500 backward compatible PS4 games playable on PS5 Pro. This feature may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games. Enhanced Image Quality for PS4 games is also available to improve the resolution on select PS4 games.

No idea whether it's just the same boost PS5 has, or injecting PSSR into the games, or altered framerate cap, or something else altogether. If it enhanced a bunch of PS4 games beyond what the PS5 currently does that would be interesting.

[BazookaBen]

or injecting PSSR

Jesus, Sony really needs to find a new acronym for their upscaler

[Steven]

This piece of shit costs more than my fucking PC did at a time when the parts I was using were one step below the most powerful components on the market.

Fortunately for me, computer parts have really not changed in price that much here since then, but console prices have nearly tripled. Using the same amount of money, I can either get an upgraded version of a console that I already have that still has no games, build a new PC that's going to be better and way more useful and has more exclusives than the entire libraries of this entire console generation, buy a new GPU since that's all I really need to be on par with this thing, or buy another Out Zone PCB. Not a difficult choice. Obviously, Out Zone is the correct option.

Behold the modern-day SuperGrafx, except the SuperGrafx is infinitely cooler than this monstrosity.

[orange808]

3DO prices (adjusted for inflation) and an infinite subscription fee to use it. I'm sure there's a market for it, but I can't justify it.

Definitely the machine to have if you want to play the latest games at release and participate in the online community. I have a huge backlog and I'm not a young adult anymore. Not my wheelhouse.

[BazookaBen]

Just so y'all know, the primary reason for this console's existence is most likely GTA6.

People will poopsock that game for months and years, and there's going to be a portion of that audience that will want to play it at the highest fidelity

[Lander]

Makes a man nostalgic for the days of Kaz Hirai's legendary FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE U.S. DOLLARS announcement

And of course, no adjustment for the distinctly-not-one-to-one USD / GBP exchange rate. I could buy a small car with that kind of scratch!

[ASDR]

This feels so weird because there has been no price drops this gen and multiple price increases in certain regions. If the PS5 Base was 399 and the Pro was 499 all of this would seem more sensible. And then you get the crazy EU price + the fact that unlike the launch PS5 this version includes neither the vertical stand nor the disc drive... I couldn't care less about this. I'll keep my launch model for this gen. Honestly, I barely think the PS5 needed to exist. The cross-gen period was so long and games like TLOU2, RDR2, Uncharted 4 etc. and the cross-gen games like Horizon FW / GoW:R / GT7 look and run good enough for me on a PS4. Biggest game I played this year was Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and that still had a perfectly serviceable PS4 port. I don't see anything on PS5 that really impresses me and couldn't have been done @ 1080p30 with minor visual downgrades on a 10+ years old PS4. We should've just skipped this entire gen and waited till tech was at a point where there can be a worthwhile leap

[Lander]

Sony are bizarre. They've been in a prime spot to keep an iron grip on the lead MS so kindly handed them during the great 'bone catastrophe of '13, but always end up tipping so far into agressive greed as to let it slip again.

We should've just skipped this entire gen and waited till tech was at a point where there can be a worthwhile leap

We'd be waiting a while, I suspect, what with display manufacturers blazing ahead with little regard for whether 8K, 16K, whatever-power-of-two-K screens are actually useful relative to our ability to produce (non-cheatily-upscaled) content to display on them!

I have a feeling that the gradual creep into subscription services etc is an attempt to deal with the tech angle, by reshaping the market to be more fluid and continuous, versus traditional discrete every-so-many-years cycles where the box itself is a big deal. Wouldn't be a terrible idea in the grand scheme, if any of the involved parties had the self-control not to implement the idea by way of egregious rip-offs.

[orange808]

I have a feeling that the gradual creep into subscription services and is an attempt to deal with the tech angle, by reshaping the market to be more fluid and continuous, versus traditional discrete every-so-many-years cycles where the box itself is a big deal. Wouldn't be a terrible idea in the grand scheme, if any of the involved parties had the self-control not to implement the idea by way of egregious rip-offs.

Like OnLive and Stadia?

It's a big trade off for convenience and there's no way to hand any company that much leverage without getting boned (in the end). I've never seen any gaming company exercise much restraint.

The worst part is an inferior experience and no guarantee that I can play my own games tomorrow. I don't want to remotely play laggy games that I cannot own using forced "always online" streaming with tiling/tearing on a thin client terminal device.

[Sima Tuna]

There's already no reason for me to have a PS5. I didn't buy an Xbone and I only play PS4 on another household member's system. PS4 is still a good system to get if you don't want to go Switch but you still like shmups and ACA stuff. But for me, who has a Switch, Bloodborne is still literally the only reason to play PS4.

And that's PS4. A last-gen system with an established library of games. When it comes to PS5, there's just nothing that appeals to me. Some people are saying that Astro Bot is the new system seller. Guess it depends how starved you are for a 3d platformer, as I've said in another thread. PS5 Pro is just a completely unnecessary thing with absolutely no demand for it. Who is out there complaining that the base PS5 isn't strong enough?

If I wanted to spend $700 for a system, I'd buy a steam deck with all the bells and whistles.

Subscriptions services are absolute cancer btw. Take what you would spend in subscription services per month and put that towards games on sale and you'll build out a decent library in no time. Especially if PC is an option for you. GoG alone regularly sell games at $2 each for established (though older) hits.

[Steven]

PS4's worth having for Battle Garegga, at least.

PortStation 5 is already a weird system. It's pretty useless for its own games because there are like none of them and most of the very few that do exist are just PS4 games that load faster, but it's really good for some PS4 games that run like garbage on the PS4 but have unlocked framerates, which allows those games to take advantage of the PS5 to run properly. PortStation 5 Pro doesn't really need to exist, especially with the PS4 still probably holding the PS5 back. How many native PS5 games actually take advantage of the regular PS5?

[Lander]

Like OnLive and Stadia?

It's a big trade off for convenience and there's no way to hand any company that much leverage without getting boned (in the end). I've never seen any gaming company exercise much restraint.

The worst part is an inferior experience and no guarantee that I can play my own games tomorrow. I don't want to remotely play laggy games that I cannot own using forced "always online" streaming with tiling/tearing on a thin client terminal device.

Fuck, OnLive. I queued up to get one of their boxes for free at EGX one year - time likely better spent literally anywhere else in the expo couldn't even flash Linux onto the thing to squeeze out some extra utility once the service folded.

And not specifically streaming, since it's a shite experience that can never measure up to a local native program. More along the lines of GamePass / PS Plus, and the recent push to get first-party titles on Steam; less focus on gating game X behind machine Y, and more on the games themselves, since selling a low-spec box for high-spec money isn't going to be sustainable forever.

Not to say the way it's shaken out is great, of course - uninteresting filler games unless you pay for the primo tier, spotty cross-plat releases for particularly notable cough Demon's Souls cough titles, etc.

[Steven]

Consoles will likely all become subscription-based streaming boxes eventually, with Nintendo holding out the longest. At that point, the specs and stuff won't matter because it's all being done on some computer somewhere.

PC and old games are already the saviours of gaming now, and that'll be even more true in the future.

[orange808]

I didn't realize how many other people had gone PC and Switch. It was quite unpopular (to not own a current gen console) when I was PC and Wii years ago. I saw the subscriptions on the consoles and walked away.

I'm not so sure about the streaming. We'll see. Casual games are small downloads on mobile and tablets. Everyone says that casual gamers don't care about a poor laggy experience and you're right, but here's the problem: casual games don't need a monster rig or a huge download. They don't need streaming and many casuals like free to play games with micro transactions on their mobiles. They aren't even going to buy another console. Steaming those games doesn't make sense. It's cheaper to host a download and purchases on a store front.

Americans don't want to hear little Billy complain that his Switch isn't working in the back seat. The machine isn't there to create more headaches for parents. It needs to just work.

People say the network will be fast enough and perfectly reliable everywhere. Maybe, but when?

That leaves Sony and Microsoft scrapping for the young adult core gamer category. I don't know what the kids want. Maybe they aren't like me and they don't care about latency and snappy gameplay. It's possible. Maybe they do want 8k graphics, aim assist, nerfed gameplay, and endless talking. Why not just waggle a controller around randomly while you watch a movie?

[ASDR]

If I was working on the PS6 right now my main focus would be how we can actually develop games that can take advantage of that hardware without costing 200$ and taking 9 years. Like others here have said most PS5 games feel like PS4 games running on more powerful hardware. There are still cross-gen titles coming out and nothing really feels like it couldn't be done on a 2013 PS4 with just some visual downgrades. Games are so expensive and take so long to make, few developers want to go all out on targeting high-end only. Games anyway seem to be more limited by artist man hours than teraflop. What Naughty Dog or Rockstar did n the PS4 still looks better than 90% of PS5 titles. If Switch 2 is just as successful as the first one we'll have another 7 years of a PS4-level console hanging around and many developers will want to target that. These days I play mostly JPN games and those generally have a smaller audience and will likely hang around the PS4-level of tech for a long time.

[BazookaBen]

yeah, the problem is that if you want to develop a game that fully takes advantage of PS5 hardware, you basically need the budget of a major Hollywood movie. That is incredibly risky, which is why all the AAA games nowadays are pretty generic and safe. They have to sell millions to recoup their costs.

So honestly, I welcome Switch 2 becoming the "target" for a lot of developers, and the PS5 generation just running those games with more detail and at 4k 120fps. I'd rather have original, high quality, but less graphically complex games, than the milquetoast AAA games that Sony and Microsoft are targeting nowadays

[orange808]

Can PS5 work a true 4k framebuffer with no upscaling at 120 frames per second without significant compromises?

[BazookaBen]

Can PS5 work a true 4k framebuffer with no upscaling at 120 frames per second without significant compromises?

Base PS5 already has quite a few 4k120 games. They're usually either indie games or upgraded PS4 games

EDIT:oh, no upscaling. Maybe the indie games but I imagine the PS4 games might still not be a locked 3840x2160

[Lander]

Doubtful, unless the sample software is Minter's Polybius!

Though in fairness, neither could a space station, if presented with some of these modern upscaler-centric games. Scenes and rendering pipelines are becoming less efficient in classical rasterization terms, so trying to go without the crutch results in a chop-fest on even the beefiest hardware.

The opening of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a prime example; super dense, detailed, tons of instanced models... And borderline unplayable on a top-line GPU if you ask it for 4K120 without dynamic resolution scaling.
Cracking game, and no doubt superior to the equivalent console experience, but we're drifting back to that Can it run Crysis? time when there wasn't really a reasonable expectation of maxing out a given game on current hardware.

[spmbx]

The whole "does it do native 4k120" point is a bit of a strange one. What counts as a proper game to consider? I mean you can have 4k120 native pong for example but yeah. When is a game complex enough to "count" ?

[Sima Tuna]

Can PS5 work a true 4k framebuffer with no upscaling at 120 frames per second without significant compromises?

Is any of this stuff people care about enough to buy a $700 game console?

Is 1080p60fps locked really so bad?

Feels to me like we're capping out on what a "new" game system can even offer. Early HD era was a massive improvement in visual fidelity. Now we've got systems strong enough to lock in 60fps. Is 120fps worth another $700?

And if somebody really does care that much about max locked FPS + true 4K, then why don't they already have a PC to do this? I think people who buy a game console have different priorities. Like... What games are on the system. If they are fun. If the library has games that other consoles/pc don't have. If the price/reliability equation is reasonable.

I guess I'd have to play-compare a game at locked 60fps versus a locked 120fps to see if it really does improve the experience. I play plenty of twitchy genre games. But as long as they have 60fps, that's usually more than good enough for me. 120FPS in Devil May Cry probably feels good, but 60FPS feels good too. We live in a world where devil may cry 3 runs at locked 60FPS on a portable system I can play on the crapper. So what's the PS5 Pro gonna do?

Switch 2 with locked 60fps (sadly, most current Switch games do fall short of this) is the dream. Locked 60fps, 1080p while sitting on the pot. The true Final Frontier of gaming.

The whole "does it do native 4k120" point is a bit of a strange one. What counts as a proper game to consider? I mean you can have 4k120 native pong for example but yeah. When is a game complex enough to "count" ?

The real question is when do we get true native 8K so I can watch Lawrence of Arabia on the original Super Panavision 70, 65mm film stock.

Spoiler

I would say any game pre-HD era doesn't count for the purpose of 4k/120fps discussion. All of those should be able to run at max resolution and max framerate on modern systems.

[Lemnear]

This feels so weird because there has been no price drops this gen and multiple price increases in certain regions. If the PS5 Base was 399 and the Pro was 499 all of this would seem more sensible. And then you get the crazy EU price + the fact that unlike the launch PS5 this version includes neither the vertical stand nor the disc drive... I couldn't care less about this. I'll keep my launch model for this gen. Honestly, I barely think the PS5 needed to exist. The cross-gen period was so long and games like TLOU2, RDR2, Uncharted 4 etc. and the cross-gen games like Horizon FW / GoW:R / GT7 look and run good enough for me on a PS4. Biggest game I played this year was Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and that still had a perfectly serviceable PS4 port. I don't see anything on PS5 that really impresses me and couldn't have been done @ 1080p30 with minor visual downgrades on a 10+ years old PS4. We should've just skipped this entire gen and waited till tech was at a point where there can be a worthwhile leap

9th generation in a nutshell.

[Steven]

Is 1080p60fps locked really so bad?

Inherently no, but 1080 vertical resolutions are kind of not great anyway because they aren't an integer scale of 240 vertical resolutions, so for old games it's not optimal. The PS5's max output resolution is an even multiple of 240, so it's theoretically better than the PS4 for old games, but of course most of the old games are for PS4, not PS5, so they don't take advantage of this... not that Hamster or M2 know how to do scaling properly anyway, unfortunately.

[Josh128]

Can PS5 work a true 4k framebuffer with no upscaling at 120 frames per second without significant compromises?

Base PS5 already has quite a few 4k120 games. They're usually either indie games or upgraded PS4 games

EDIT:oh, no upscaling. Maybe the indie games but I imagine the PS4 games might still not be a locked 3840x2160

Depends if one considers interpolated frames as "upscaling". With the FSR 3 frame gen tech, which has been reviewed and deemed just as good, if not better, than Nvidias implementation, 4K 120 will actually be a cake walk on this hardware.

Someone mentioned Hollywood movie budget is necessary to take advantage of this hardware. That is correct, but it was basically correct for consoles dating back to PS4 and even some PS3/Xbox360 games. My wife and I have been playing NES Adventure Island 2 lately on me 36" Trinitron, and I just went visit my buddy who showed me Horizon: Forbidden West on his 1440p, 32" , G-Sync 165Hz LCD running on a 3080Ti/13900K system. Its mind boggling how much detail is in that game, it seems like it would be something like a BILLION+ times the man hours to create something like that compared to an NES sidescroller.

Anyways, even without frame generation, HFW on that system never dropped a frame on the 20 or so minutes I played around in it, at full fidelity. PS5 Pro will be similar in GPU power to that system, plus frame gen as needed. I know this has been said every gen since PS2/Xbox/GCN, but I literally cant think of any reason to require more hardware power than what I saw yesterday. None. Tens of thousands of blades of grass blowing in fields, footprints in mud visible underwater in shallow pools as you walk through them, what looks to be miles of visiblilty at the horizon.

I think gaming graphics hardware have reached a point where the limit is only on the developer. Maybe a bit stronger ray tracing, (coming in PS5 Pro) is really all that could use a bit of improvement. Thats it. Its an odd thought.

[Lander]

I guess I'd have to play-compare a game at locked 60fps versus a locked 120fps to see if it really does improve the experience. I play plenty of twitchy genre games. But as long as they have 60fps, that's usually more than good enough for me. 120FPS in Devil May Cry probably feels good, but 60FPS feels good too.

60 is certainly sufficient, but 120+ is so smooth that you don't want to go back after tasting it for the first time, especially in action games or sufficiently modern shmups. The only things I've played on my faithful old 1080/60 telly in the last few years (despite not loving the desk-lock factor of monitor play) are those that can't be had elsewhere, like console-only Froms or Ninja Gaiden 2 vanilla. Feels like missing out otherwise.

Depends if one considers interpolated frames as "upscaling". With the FSR 3 frame gen tech, which has been reviewed and deemed just as good, if not better, than Nvidias implementation, 4K 120 will actually be a cake walk on this hardware.

In literal, no - "image reconstruction" is probably a better term. But as far as the console / modern realtime discussion goes, upscaling is a convenient umbrella term for any rendering method that 'cheats' its way out of actually calculating pixels 1:1 with the display resolution.

There's argumentation to be made around the point where it becomes truly indistinguishable from the traditional approach, but we're definitely not there yet.

what looks to be miles of visiblilty at the horizon.

Muddied slightly by the lack of raster detail at the horizon line, I suspect! Being able to see tiny things miles away in sharp detail is one of the niceties I've observed with true 4K presentation, but tends to be the part that suffers hardest from reconstruction.

what looks to be miles of visiblilty at the horizon.
I think gaming graphics hardware have reached a point where the limit is only on the developer. Maybe a bit stronger ray tracing, (coming in PS5 Pro) is really all that could use a bit of improvement.

Kind of; the fact that ray tracing and hardware tensor stuff is being genuinely pursued (after years upon years of promising-but-impractical research tech demos) suggests that raw rasterization power is starting to drop off as a viable means to scale. Especially with display manufacturers showing no sign of slowing their roll.

Though unfortunately, it's very much a case of square peg round hole; on paper, raytracing is a paradigm shift that lifts a whole bunch of performance-centric legacy hacks and tricks from the rendering process - most notably, having to represent everything as triangles - but modern HW raytracing implementations are still fundamentally based on the same raster-first data structures, since that's where the years of performance R&D and dug-in engine tech have focused.

Media Molecule's Dreams is the sole outlying innovator; that game disables the GPU rasterizer entirely and runs everything in compute, effectively creating a 'hardware software renderer' that can draw whatever it likes without need to translate it into performant triangles and shading hacks. That's why it looks kind of 'soft' has so many fancy effects like fur and whatnot - you just write a math function describing a surface (or have the player compose them out of nice easy primitives,) and the rays take care of the rest.