The damaging obsession with 4K — and now even 8K, it seems — continues to rule the marketing gimmicks of console manufacturers, which is why Sony is reportedly going ahead with a mid-gen refresh for PlayStation 5.
According to a report by Tom Henderson — who has a reliable track record when it comes to rumors of this nature — the company is planning the PS5 Pro for the holiday season of 2024. Codenamed “Trinity” — because Sony has a real penchant for Matrix references — this new hardware is supposed to double the raw power of the standard edition, targeting fluid 4K@60fps gameplay and even going for an 8K 30fps “Quality Mode.” In addition to those extra pixels, PlayStation 5 Pro will feature new raytracing features.
The PS4 Pro arrived at a scene where most games were struggling to play well on the severely outdated architecture of the standard eighth-gen consoles. But with the new PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X amending that mistake by incorporating the latest RDNA2 architecture and giving devs as much as five times the raw power of their predecessors, a lot of fans don’t think we need a “PlayStation 5 Pro.”
Besides, if there’s one thing we’ve learned this past year, it all comes down to optimization, not more power.
Many simply wouldn’t go through the trouble of selling their PS5 to buy the Pro version.
If Sony releases a PlayStation 5 Pro, does that mean Microsoft is going to follow suit with an upgraded Xbox Series X? Assuming Nintendo will continue to do its own thing in the near future, that’s going to leave devs with at least six platforms to optimize their game on, which should be a logistical nightmare.
And don’t get us started on the price tag for this powerful refresh. If PS5 Pro is doubling the performance and giving you all those juicy visual fidelity options, then you can expect the price to also increase substantially.
Besides, do we even need a Pro version? Most people, especially current customers, would argue against it. But then, that has never stopped corporations before.
