PlayStation 5 Pro Officially Revealed By Sony, Will Cost $699 USD

Sony has officially revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro.The new console will sell for $699.99 USD for a version without a disk drive; the PlayStation 5 Pro will hit store shelves on November 7th.

Announced this morning in a video from the PlayStation YouTube channel, as well as an accompanying blog post, the focus of the new hardware is three key features. The first of these is a better GPU, which enables up to “45% faster rendering for gameplay” and has 28% faster memory. The second is adding the capability for AI-driven upscaling using ‘PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution’ (PSSR), which utilizes machine learning to increase the resolution and visual clarity of an in-game image (think DLSS or XeSS on PC). 

Finally, the developer has changed the ray tracing technology used within the hardware to allow for more dynamic reflections, as well as the speed at which rays are rendered in various games. These changes were demonstrated using several titles such as The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Horizon Forbidden West, with titles that support PS5 Pro upgrades featuring a new label. 

This means that players on the new console won’t necessarily need to choose between visual fidelity and performance, with many of the PS5 Pro-optimized games allowing for 60fps fidelity modes. The console will also feature support for 8K resolution, VRR, and WiFi 7, and eagle-eyed users will notice that one of the USB-A connections in the rear I/O has been replaced with an additional USB-C port. 

However, the reveal has come under a whole host of criticism online. Chief among them is that the console is $700 without a disk drive, and the visual improvements shown in the reveal are incremental at best (though this could be down to YouTube’s compression not necessarily doing the best job of showing it off). It’s also notable that it is, in fact, possible to get a separate disk drive, but that adds an extra $100 to the asking price. 

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