The PS5 Pro has been rumored for over a year and has proven to be exactly what most people expected: a similar-looking machine that runs games with incrementally better graphics and performance. The only thing people didn’t expect was the price of 700 dollarsand the price shock has turned some fairly straightforward discussions about the pros and cons of upgrades into a strangely heated proxy war over seemingly unrelated issues.
Sony system architect Mark Cerny introduced the PS5 Pro earlier this week with a series of comparison shots between games running on the existing hardware and the new machine. The differences were difficult to recognizein particular through compressed YouTube video materialbut the Bullet points sounded good: a GPU that’s 45 percent faster at rendering games, advanced ray tracing that improves the speed of light by two or even three times, and AI-driven upscaling called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) to further improve image sharpness and detail. But when the price was announced, price shock took hold, largely drowning out more nuanced conversations about the new device.
How much better will games look on the PS5 Pro?
It’s easy to see why. $700 is a lot of money for a video game console, and adjusted for inflation, that’s third highest price Sony has charged money for a new console. And the company’s presentation did it no favors as it tried to sell gamers on the benefits of a PS5 Pro as their next big gaming purchase. Cerny’s presentation featured old games, including the next-gen port of The Last of Us Part II that originally came out on the PS4. There was no new game running in 4K at 60fps to excite fans, and the differences in smoothness and background detail were barely noticeable online. Oddly, there was only one outlet, CNETseemed to have been invited test the new hardware personally.
It wasn’t until some experts started looking at direct, lossless renderings of PS5 Pro gameplay footage that the improvements made a bigger impression. “Wow, yes, FF7R looks MUCH better on PS5 Pro,” tweeted Digital Foundry‘s John Linneman a few days after the initial reveal. “A difference like night and day. I’ve actually been putting off playing it because other things were happening at the time of release, but the Pro will finally make me enjoy it. The picture quality was just too bad on the regular PS5.”
The cautious comment sparked a storm of indignation in which the PS5 Pro and the criticism of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth‘s existing graphics on the base PS5. That was odd, because the way Square Enix’s sprawling RPG looked great when stationary but was choppy in motion was widely talked about at launch. If anything, it’s an ideal test case for the PS5 Pro upgrade: a third-party game trying to hold things together within the current limitations of the launch hardware.
A comparable PC is more expensive than expected
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is also the kind of game that will be coming to PC in the future, where it will likely look even better on high-end machines than it does on the PS5 Pro. But how much will these gaming rigs cost compared to what Sony is offering? We don’t have the full official specs for the PS5 Pro yet, but builds on sites like PCPartPicker range from slightly more expensive to a much more expensive.
For example, a barebone PC from IGN The attempt to combine SSD storage and GPU performance resulted in a Estimated cost of about $930. Not bad for a machine that has access to Steam sales and freebies from the Epic Games Store, and doesn’t require a monthly subscription for online multiplayer. But other, more conservative estimates put the price much higher. A custom build from Tech Radar The cost was estimated at about $1,200and that doesn’t even include a DualSense controller to make the most of Sony’s first-party games when they’re ported to PC. But even that number might be underestimated.
“Probably a lot more,” Digital FoundryRichard Leadbetter said IGN in a current interview when asked how much a comparable PC would cost. “If you look at the big picture of all the different components, the enhanced ray tracing – no AMD GPU has that right now – the machine learning block – no AMD GPU has that – it’s basically almost like an Nvidia-style feature set but from AMD, and the closest equivalent GPU you can afford would be the RTX 4070. The 4060 is pretty close to the base PlayStation 5 if you ignore machine learning and ray tracing, so it’s a 4070.”
The cheapest versions of these GPUs often cost over $500, with costs “skyrocketing” from there when you factor in the 2TB SSD, motherboard, case, and other required PC parts. Leadbetter stressed that the PS5 Pro’s price is still “crazy,” but the math is a bit more complicated, plus the product is largely aimed at existing PlayStation users who are unlikely to want to switch to PC and leave their existing game libraries behind. He also noted that the hardware jump from the PS5 to the PS5 Pro is smaller this time than it was when Sony unveiled the move from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro, which he largely attributed to an industry-wide struggle to bring down the cost of more powerful technology.
What is the real deal with the hatred of the PS5 Pro?
Not everyone believes that Sony is doing its best with the price of the PS5 Pro. Opinion video at the reveal by LinusTechTips blamed this in part on a lack of competition in the high-end console space. With the PS5 reportedly seeing double the sales of the Xbox Series X/S and the Switch 2 not yet ready for production, the YouTube channel argues that Sony is under less pressure to reduce its profit margins on the PS5 Pro and try to launch it at a more attractive price.
There is some analysis to support this argument. “With no comparable mid-gen upgrade from Microsoft and Nintendo’s upcoming console expected to be less powerful than the base PS5, Sony is positioning the PS5 Pro as a premium offering for console gamers looking for superior graphics performance at a reasonably affordable price compared to high-end PCs.” wrote Daniel Ahmad, Director of Research and Insights at Niko Partners, in a recent thread on this topic.
Since the console is aimed directly at existing PS5 owners who are tied to a living room gaming setup, the Pro offers Sony the opportunity to bring the most powerful console on the market to an audience of “price insensitive“Users willing to spend more. “Manufacturing costs, including component prices such as for SSDs, remained high even after the pandemic, putting pressure on hardware margins,” Ahmad wrote. “The lack of expansion in the console’s overall install base from previous generations has also led platform holders to maximize per-user spend and expand beyond the console.”
While the Pro makes business sense for Sony, it does nothing to alleviate the growing frustration with the PlayStation platform this console generation. While the PS4 era was characterized by lower-cost debut hardware and the introduction of a first-party studio system aimed at producing one mega-blockbuster after another, the PS5 era is synonymous with higher prices and a sense of less innovation and experimentation. Astro Bot is a brilliant exception in a sea of first-party sequels that, while impressive, felt bloated compared to the novelty of their PS4-era predecessors.
Where are the brand new Sony franchises? Where are the PS5 blockbusters that set new standards not only in terms of graphics, but also in terms of storytelling, mechanics and design? Instead of a big PlayStation show in 2024 that will blow them away, fans got Unity, a live service also ran unsynchronized with the player base that Sony unceremoniously pulled it within a month. In some ways, Sony is a victim of its own success and the high expectations that now come with it. And so far, the only thing that feels exceptional about the PS5 Pro is its price.
