Sony announces PS5 Pro, a $700 graphical upgrade available Nov. 7

The cool racing stripe means it's faster.
Enlarge / The cool racing stripe means it’s faster.

Sony today announced the PlayStation 5 Pro, a mid-generation hardware upgrade that will play the same game library as 2020’s PlayStation 5, but with higher frame rates and better resolution than on the original system. The new units will be available on November 7 for $700, Sony said.

The updated hardware will come complete with 2TB of solid-state storage (up from 1TB on the original PS5), but without an Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc drive, which users can purchase as an add-on accessory for $80.

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In a video presentation Tuesday, Sony’s Mark Cerny said PS5 developers “desire more graphics performance” in order to deliver the visuals they want at a frame rate of 60 fps. The lack of enough graphical power on the PS5 leads to a difficult decision for players between the higher resolution of “fidelity” mode and the smoother frame rates of “performance” mode (with three-quarters of players choosing the latter, according to Cerny).

The goal of the PS5 Pro, Cerny says, is delivering “the graphics that the game creators aspire to, at the high frame rates players typically prefer.” To do this, the new system will sport a larger GPU that can support “up to 45 percent faster rendering,” Cerny said, with 67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster video RAM than the PS5. This will allow for “almost fidelity-like graphics at ‘performance’ frame rates” of 60 frames per second in many existing PS5 games, Cerny said.

  • The two sides of this comparison are supposed to look comparable in fidelity, but the PS5 Pro is running at 60 fps, as opposed to 30 fps on the PS5.

  • Spider-Man 2 is one of the games that will benefit from smoother frame rates at high-fidelity on PS5 Pro.

  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was shown running much more smoothly on the PS5 Pro.

  • Compared to the high-frame-rate “performance” mode on PS5, many games show increased fidelity on the PS5 Pro.

  • AI upscaling helps Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart crowd scenes look sharped on PS5 Pro.

  • Incidental details like spider-Man 2‘s street traffic look sharper on the PS5 Pro than “performance” mode on the PS5.

  • The PS5 Pro allows for ray-traced car reflections in Gran Turismo 7 while maintaining a 60 fps frame rate.

  • The PS5 Pro allows for “further realism in the casting of shadows” in Hogwarts Legacy, Cerny said.

  • Horizon: Forbidden West get “improvements to lighting and visual effects” on the PS5 Pro, Cerny said.

  • Horizon: Forbidden West cinematics will show “[improvements to] the hair and skin” in cinematics on the PS5 Pro, Cerny said.

The PS5 Pro will also bring what Cerny says is a “streamlined and accelerated approach” to ray-tracing, with individual rays calculated at “double or even triple the speeds of PlayStation 5.” In examples shown on video, Cerny highlighted how reflections between cars are now available at 60 fps for Gran Turismo 7 on the PS5 Pro, and how games like Hogwarts Legacy could have more realistic shadow effects.

An “AI library” called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) will be available on the PS5 Pro to automatically upscale in-game scenes as well. Cerny highlighted how this can make distant crowds in a game like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart to look much clearer.

Titles that can take advantage of the PS5 Pro’s more powerful GPU will be marketed as “PS5 Pro Enhanced.” Titles that will sport that designation include:

  • Alan Wake 2
  • Assassin’s Creed: Shadows
  • Demon’s Souls
  • Dragon’s Dogma 2
  • Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
  • Gran Turismo 7
  • Hogwarts Legacy
  • Horizon Forbidden West
  • Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
  • Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
  • The Crew Motorfest
  • The First Descendant
  • The Last of Us Part II Remastered

Other titles will be able to take advantage of “PS5 Pro Game Boost,” which Sony says “may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games.”

PS5.5

The upgrade follows the history of the PS4 Pro, which launched almost exactly three years after the PS4 and offered the capacity for higher resolutions, faster frame rates, or both in many PS4 library games. The PS5 Pro comes further into the lifecycle for Sony’s latest console, though, and at a point where Sony has yet to lower the $500 launch price for the console and increased the price of the disc-drive-free Digital Edition last year (though inflation has taken some of the sting out of that nominal pricing).

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The PS5 Pro comes after last year’s launch of a redesigned PS5 “Slim” model, which reduced the original PS5’s famously massive bulk while keeping the internal processing power the same while

Microsoft has yet to show any sign of plans for a similar update for the Xbox Series X/S, which also launched in late 2020. Earlier this year, though, Microsoft announced the first disc-drive-free edition of the Xbox Series X for this holiday season.

Nintendo, which launched a Switch with an improved OLED screen in 2021, is widely expected to launch a backward- compatible follow-up to the Switch in 2025.

This story has been updated with additional details and visuals from Sony’s announcement.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=2048663