Are you ready to add onto your credit card debt?
You better be, because the PS5 Pro is real and it’s expensive. Sony finally lifted the curtain off the upgraded mid-gen PS5 console with a short video hosted by PlayStation hardware guru Mark Cerny. Put simply, it’s just a more powerful PS5. It will play all of the same games, but some of them will look and run better on it.
It launches on Nov. 7 for $699 (yes, $699) and does not come with a disc drive or a vertical stand. Preorders begin on Sept. 26.
Cerny’s video was relatively quick and to the point, outlining some of the more nerdy technical details before showing off how some games look on PS5 Pro. It’s got a larger GPU, more advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaling capabilities that can bring higher resolutions and frame rates to games. Cerny showed The Last of Us Part II Remastered running at 60 frames per second on the game’s “Graphics Mode” option, which would run at 30FPS on a PS5.
Cerny seemed to imply that multiple games will be able to boost 30FPS modes up to 60FPS, which would indeed be huge. Having to choose between graphics modes on PS5 games has become increasingly difficult as games become more advanced and the compromises on one end or the other become more extreme. Black Myth: Wukong, for example, looks amazing on PS5, but its 30FPS mode is wildly unstable and its 60FPS mode has substantial input delay. If a PS5 Pro could fix that, it may go a long way.
But $700 for a console with no disc drive will be a tough sell for a lot of people, especially those who thought $500 for the OG PS5 was asking a lot. We’ll see how many people choose to take the plunge come November.
