The PlayStation 5 has been on the market for almost two and a half years now, and while it may not be apparent at first glance, Sony has released two more recent revisions that change its guts. The one from last year modified the cooling, the one from last year also brought a smaller and more economical chip thanks to the transition to 6nm production.
Well-known and reliable insider Tom Henderson said in the fall that this year we are in for an even bigger change and now that idea he repeated. In order to reduce production and distribution costs, Sony will combine two PS5 editions into one. It will not have an optical drive, but it will be possible to connect an external one.
It is not clear if it will only cancel the higher version and introduce an external drive that can be connected to existing digital models. Alternatively, if the console also undergoes some kind of redesign. Personally, I would prefer the second option, because PS3 and PS4 received a significantly redesigned model three years after their release Slim.
In addition, the PlayStation 4 was the first in Sony’s history to bring a half-generation upgrade in the form of a more powerful Pro model. According to Tom Henderson, we can expect i PS5 Probut not until the second half of 2024 at the earliest. We do not yet know what it will look like, what it will be able to do.
However, increasing the performance will primarily be the responsibility of AMD, and there the path is already lined up. The current PS5 uses an APU with a Zen 2 architecture processor and RDNA 2 graphics. But the company already has more powerful Zen 3 and 4 and RDNA 3, and in addition, access to more advanced 5- and 4nm manufacturing technologies from TSMC, so that only performance increases, but not consumption and size. They have now significantly reduced the price of memory chips, so the PS5 Pro would not have to stay with just 16 GB of RAM and an 825 GB SSD.
The PS5 Pro can then make gaming in 4K at 60 frames per second the norm, with less demanding titles going up to 120 fps. Or ask for ray tracing. Higher performance will also be important for virtual reality, where a higher frame rate is mandatory (90-120 Hz) and the image consists of plus or minus the same number of pixels. While TVs and monitors have 3840 x 2160 px, the PS VR2 uses a pair of OLEDs with a total resolution of 4000 x 2040 px.
