Sony has announced the PlayStation 5 Pro, with powerful new hardware that it says will improve both new and old games.
The new console concentrates on a “big three” of features, said Mark Cerny, Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS5.
Those are a bigger GPU, advanced ray tracing and upscaling of games that uses artificial intelligence.
Currently, many PlayStation games ask users to choose between a performance with responsive graphics and a fidelity mode that allows games to look more detailed, and Sony says that most players choose performance. The new console was built to try and ensure that players don’t have to choose between the two, allowing for both high frame rates and detailed games.
The upgraded GPU means that the console as 67 per cent more compute units than the current PS5, and 28 per cent faster memory. That can allow games to render up to 45 per cent faster, Sony said.
The advanced ray tracing – which uses new technology to show light as if it is really falling and reflecting within a space – means that light can be drawn at up to three times the speed of the current console.
And the AI-driven upscaling uses machine learning technology to add new detail into games, Sony said.
That and other technologies mean that even some PlayStation 4 games will get better performance, with a technology Sony calls “Enhanced Image Quality”. But many new games will be specifically updated to make use of the extra performance, and they will get a “PS5 Pro Enhanced” to indicate that they are taking advantage of the new console.
It will be available on 7 November, and will cost $699.99. It takes its design from the PS5 Slim.
It has three black fins around halfway down the body, and comes in the same black and white colour scheme and design that has marked out the PlayStation 5 models since the first was released in 2020.
The height is the same as the original PS5, and the width is the same size as the new slimmer one, which Sony said was to ensure it could “accommodate higher performance specs”.
The PS5’s menus and the look of the user interface will be the same as the existing console.
It does not include a disc drive, though an external one can be used.