In the last article I wrote for Eurogamer, I wondered how Sony would tackle the challenge of marketing a premium version of the PlayStation 5 when the standard PS5 – arguably – already commands a premium price-point which hasn’t shifted substantially since its launch four years ago. The answer was surprisingly straightforward: users love 60fps performance modes, so why not serve that up with enhanced quality comparable to today’s 30fps fidelity modes? It’s an elegant solution for presenting a higher-end piece of hardware without making the standard model look lacking.
Beyond that, the marketing became significantly less convincing, culminating in a price-point that’s so high, few saw it coming. We have entered the age of the £699/$699 console, rising to an astonishing €800 for our friends in Europe. This price rises still further if you actually want to run your existing library of physical games on it as you’ll need to invest £99/$79/€99 in an optical drive to run them.
Lead system architect Mark Cerny took centre stage in revealing PlayStation Pro – a good move from Sony. Cerny presents with an understated by intense passion for technology, shown at its best for the reveals of PlayStation 4 and its successor. However, this time around, he was not given the time to deliver any kind of deep dive into what makes the PS5 Pro architecture so clever. Instead, we get edited highlights, if you like, condensing the Pro’s key features into a ‘Big Three’ – a larger, more potent GPU, enhanced ray tracing and machine learning hardware used for upscaling. Bearing in mind that PS5 Pro will be appealing to the high-end enthusiast that’s thirsty for technical detail, the barebones nature of the presentation just didn’t make sense.
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