Sony’s PlayStation 5 Pro is almost here. The PS5 Pro pushes gaming console boundaries with a more powerful GPU, better ray tracing and a narrower gap between graphical fidelity and performance. Unfortunately, it also pushes your wallet’s boundaries with a $700 price tag. (Cue spit take.) If that isn’t far beyond your console budget, today’s the first day to reserve the pricey powerhouse before its November 7 launch. And, as to be expected, you’ll probably want to do so immediately since the console already sold out in the UK.
The PS5 Pro offers those upgrades in a familiar form factor: It has the same height as the original PS5 and the same width as the disc-less PS5 Slim. Like the latter, you’ll need to pay extra for a disc drive or a vertical stand.
Select games from the PS5 library will be enhanced for the new console. The company’s launch event highlighted Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart and Horizon Forbidden West as some of the first-party beneficiaries of the console’s upgraded capabilities. Third-party games getting extra attention for the PS5 Pro include Alan Wake 2, Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, Demon’s Souls, Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Games patched for the $700 system will be designated with a PS5 Pro Enhanced label.
Sony
The PS5 Pro improves on the four-year-old standard model with boosted internals. The upgrades start with a GPU with 67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster RAM. These allow it to (at most) triple the PS5’s ray-tracing performance, leading to fancier lighting, reflections and shadows.
In the PS5 Pro, Sony introduces its AI-powered answer to Nvidia’s DLSS, called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR). Built for 4K TVs and displays, the tech upgrades lower-resolution frames to ultra-HD graphics “with astonishing detail.”
The console also promises more consistent frame rates (with less graphical sacrifice) and support for 60Hz and 120Hz displays. For games that aren’t updated for the new console, a PS5 Pro version of Game Boost will provide faster and smoother frame rates for over 8,500 supported titles, including “some of the PS4 and PS5 console’s greatest games.”
The console includes 2TB of storage, double the original’s capacity. It also supports Wi-Fi 7 and 8K resolutions.
The PS5 Pro costs $700. You can pre-order it today, ahead of its November 7 release date.
Sony
This retro edition of the PS5 Pro includes the console, a standard controller and a DualSense Edge controller as well. You’ll also get a retro cover for the optional disc drive and the charging stand. Unfortunately, Sony declared it would only make 12,300 of these bundles, so you’ll want to grab this pre-order early if you’re keen on the nostalgia.
