This is undoubtedly one of the biggest open secrets in the video game industry, namely the arrival at the end of the year of the new PS5, the Pro model. We’re obviously not going to be surprised, given that Sony marketed its PS5 Slim last November, and that releasing a new technically boosted machine in the middle of the cycle has become a habit for gaming manufacturers. For the moment, nothing has been officially announced, but the thing is that the technical specs of this PS5 Pro have already leaked thanks to the indiscretions of journalist Tom Henderson, who has proven many times the solidity of his sources when he is about gear at PlavStation. They must hate him so much at Sony… His revelations nevertheless pushed other media and journalists to come out of the woodwork, and Digital Foundry did not fail to confirm the veracity of the elements provided by Tom Henderson. Better, these tech journalists went further by asserting that this technical boost for the PS5 will be insufficient to present real interest in terms of purchase to a public who can count truly next gen games on the fingers of one hand . And just to drive the point home even further, developers at GDC 2024 in San Francisco which ended last weekend are also going in this direction. Is the PS5 Pro already a useless machine even before its release? We’ll try to see things more clearly…
To try to understand all this slump around the interest of the PS5 Pro, you must already take a look at the technical sheet made available by good old Tom Henderson. So, according to his information, and we are obviously going to use the conditional, the PS5 Pro would be equipped with a GPU Navi 33.8 GB of GDDR6 memory, 4096 shading units, a 128-bit memory bus and clock speeds of up to ‘at 2200 MHz. It’s very technical and difficult to understand for the general public, but roughly speaking, this would allow the console to make it possible to play games in 4K at 120 frames per second, and even support output in 8K at 120fps. Obviously, when hearing this kind of thing, it’s hard not to cringe, especially since at the moment, games that run in 4K 60 frames per second in a stable manner are actually quite rare.
If we listen to Digital Foundry’s observations during their latest podcast, the power gain of the PS5 Pro would not be able to give rise to big games that could cause an impulsive purchase from players. Of course, there are tech fans, fairly well-off, who will never refuse to update their equipment to play in the best possible conditions, but regarding the general public, there will be no games that could prove that It’s better to invest in a PS5 Pro rather than a classic PS5. According to the site GamesIndustry.biz and the journalist Christopher Dring who spent a week at the GDC in San Francisco and who was able to speak with many developers, for many of them, the arrival of the PS5 Pro would be unjustified, because they feel that they’re already not really getting the most out of the PS5. For specialists in our industry, they confirm that this generation has not yet really started and that offering a technical boost halfway through is useless.
It was also Digital Foundry who said the other time that the next GTA 6 would be unable to run in native 4K 60fps even on PS5 Pro. But in reality, if we look at what was done with the previous generation, isn’t it already the same debate? Has the PS4 Pro really created a technical gap with its little sister, the standard PS4? Not so much, it was just comfort both visually and in terms of frame rate. The technical jump was not super significant. But in reality, if this PS5 Pro would allow you to play Dragon’s Dogma 2 in 4K with a stable framerate of 60fps while the standard PS5 cannot do it, isn’t that a marketing argument precisely for Sony? So obviously in terms of pure product, there is reason to be disappointed and to confirm that this PS5 / Xbox Series generation has not been of much use, but hey, if you are in the game, it’s not I’m going to teach you that it’s all business. Still, to compensate for a technique which would not be sufficient according to experts, Sony would then call on artificial intelligence to boost its capabilities, with an intelligent upscaling system which would make it possible to aim for this famous 4K at 120fps . It’s a technology quite similar to NVIDIA’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR and would allow developers to take advantage of the power of the console without having to completely rework their games. And this point of detail precisely changes a lot of things, especially for studios which would not need to revolutionize everything to give the feeling that we are moving towards a significant gain in power.
It looks a bit like the dynamic 4K poster which replaces the native 4K which we ultimately have quite rarely on a console game, whether we are on PS5 or Xbox Series. And in truth, if some people think that it’s a scam, others will say that for a machine with 600 balls, it’s already not bad and that native 4K, well, you have to invest in a PC with graphics cards at 1500 € minimum. And in all honesty, it’s defensible… Still according to these leaked specs and the analysis of experts, Sony would particularly emphasize fast storage, which is already the case on the current PS5 with the famous “Magic SSD”, but the manufacturer would go even further, while also improving the technology around ray tracing and upscaling, which is, I remind you, a process for improving the resolution of an image. Still according to Tom Henderson, the studios should receive the development kits for this PS5 Pro within a few months and it is possible that the technical specifications will be refined with the arrival of these machines in the studios. It remains to be seen whether Microsoft intends to align itself, or whether the manufacturer has already abandoned the console war…
