After months of leaks and persistent rumors, it was finally time on Tuesday: Sony unveiled the PlayStation 5 Pro. PlayStation engineer Mark Cerny was called in to entice us with beautiful promises, and then stick the grand prize of 800 euros on the device. But let’s be honest: those promises weren’t that convincing.
Want nee, de PlayStation 5 Pro introduces no revolutionary new technologies, let alone that the console suddenly makes 8K gameplay or absurd frame rates feasible. In Cerny’s own words, the device is mainly there to cut the knot between the now familiar fidelity and performance modes. Instead of either beautiful graphics or smooth frame rates, the Pro can finally bring both together. At least, if the games are optimized for it – but we’ll come back to that later.
The PlayStation 5 Pro is supposed to perform better through a series of optimizations. “The big three,” as Cerny and his team call them. The integrated RDNA 2 GPU has 67 percent more compute units, ray tracing is handled (in an as yet unclear manner) two to three times as efficiently and, to top it all off, PlayStation is delivering its own upscaling algorithm: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR. With these three pillars, the PS5 Pro is supposed to “take games to the next level,” according to Cerny.
Let’s face it: these are noble steps to strengthen an already pretty solid system. With the help of faster RAM, the GPU should be up to 45 percent more efficient than the PS5 base model; that’s no small leap. It’s all the more unfortunate that the promised performance gains are downright marginal. Especially now that algorithmic upscaling is baked right in, you’d expect there to be something more than ‘same games, but now at 60 fps’. In the year of our Lord 2024, 60 fps is apparently still a goal.
300 euros for 30 extra frames
Lest we forget, the PlayStation 5 was already marketed four years ago as the ultimate 4K powerhouse, complete with gigantic ray tracing potential and frame rates of up to 120 fps. It was only later in the generation that it became apparent that modern graphics at 4K were often too much for 60 frames per second in the first place – see also the normalization of a choice between pomp and performance. So almost four years later, PlayStation introduces a console that should still deliver on the original promises, but for a good 300 euros more. Wake up baby, we have discovered a new form of inflation.
That makes us wonder: who exactly is the PlayStation 5 Pro meant for? The image purist, if we are to believe Cerny. But what pixel-crazy person is willing to pay an extra 300 euros to gain a maximum of 30 frames per second? It feels cliché to come back to this, but if you really want more frames or fidelity If you want, then you’re simply better off with a PC.
A modern GPU can easily run many games above 60 frames per second. Not to mention the frame rates that mature upscaling techniques such as Nvidia’s DLSS 3 make possible. PSSR is probably not the least of tricks, but the promise of ‘only’ 60 fps as a target feels downright outdated these days. On PC, the majority of modern video cards can spit out (well) above 60 frames per second with upscaling, even in stunning games or with a bit of raytracing. PlayStation apparently still lags far behind in terms of frame yield.
Sub-optimization
What also doesn’t help is that the PS5 Pro’s performance bonus doesn’t apply to all games, again unlike PC. Not all games are suddenly both beautiful and stable to play at 60fps. For the best results, games need to be optimized individually for the new hardware, which so far only seems to be the case for a bunch of older games.
For example, Gran Turismo can now use ray tracing in reflections and the backgrounds in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart are filled in more detail. Other optimizations seem less drastic. Hogwarts Legacy plays a bit more with dynamic lighting and The Last of Us Part II (a last-gen title, mind you) now simply runs at 4K/60. Again, these are not exactly gamechanging steps, even if the extra effort is made.
In all likelihood, most developers will use the new power at most to achieve higher or more stable frame rates, but not much more. After all, few studios bother to build anything unique or cutting-edge with new hardware on consoles. The PlayStation 5 was once touted as a console that could bridge loading times in large open worlds, but the games that actually take advantage of those high transfer speeds can be counted on one hand. Nobody is really going to do crazy things with that 45 percent extra processing power, except maybe Insomniac and Team Asobi.
Sure, a lot of big games will run better on a PlayStation 5 Pro than on the base model, but “taking games to the next level” is an overly ambitious statement. We’re mainly talking about beautiful gaming at a stable 60 fps, which should have been the norm a long time ago.
For the Payers
The graphical step up that the PlayStation 5 Pro offers can perhaps best be compared to a PC gamer who exchanges an RTX 2070 for an RTX 4060. Read: slightly higher frame rates, a dose of (better) upscaling and that’s it. An RTX 4060 also costs around 300 euros and will probably play more upscaled 4K games at frame rates above 60 fps, just for the sake of imagery.
The point isn’t so much that PC gamers get more bang for their buck with upgrades – that’s always been the case – the PC comparison is mainly to show that the graphical steps taken by the PlayStation 5 Pro are far from stellar. Better ray tracing, a bit of upscaling, smooth 4K gaming: these are all buzzwords and promises we’ve been hearing for over five years. And other parties simply seem to be much further ahead in this respect than what the PS5 Pro now promises, especially considering its higher price.
On one front, the PlayStation 5 Pro does seem to be on par with PC technology: the lack of a disk drive. Luxury product or not, the optical reader is now also an addendum on PlayStation that has to be purchased separately. On PC, however, that is an upgrade of a few tens of euros, where Sony is simply asking 120 euros for a Blu-ray reader. The price proposition is not getting any better.
Of course, we could see that the PS5 Pro wouldn’t be cheap, but what does the device promise for this asking price? The cost hardly outweighs the intended performance gain, especially when you compare it to the returns elsewhere. Sony’s most purist Players This generation, more than other generations, are better off with a PC.
