Sony announces PlayStation 5 Pro: Updates and release date revealed

Japanese manufacturer says new model will upgrade graphics output and incorporate AI technology to upscale video games

The PlayStation 5 Pro has been unveiled by Sony and will be its most powerful console yet. Photo: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Sony has unveiled its long-awaited PlayStation 5 Pro, an enhanced version of the PlayStation 5.

In a nine-minute technical presentation video released on Tuesday, the Japanese company announced that the new console will contain three major upgrades on the PS5, which was launched back in 2020.

The upgrades are described by Sony as “the big three” and have been led by Mark Cerny, who was the lead architect of the PS5.

Sony said the three updates – Upgraded GPU, Advanced Ray Tracing and AI-Driven Upscaling – have been designed to improve the gaming experience. This is what they will do.

Upgraded GPU

Sony said the PlayStation 5 Pro’s graphics processing unit, or GPU, will be able to compute 67 per cent more units than the PlayStation 5, as well as 28 per cent more memory. The company said this upgrade to the GPU will enable the device to run 45 per cent faster than its predecessor, especially with games that contain large worlds and lots of moving parts in the foreground and the background.

Advanced Ray Tracing

While Ray Tracing technology has been around since the PlayStation 4, it has since been improved in the PlayStation 5. Sony said Ray Tracing technology will be further enhanced with the PlayStation 5 Pro. The technology enables true reflections of objects and characters against reflective surfaces such as water or glass. During the video presentation, an example showed how cars in the game Gran Turismo are reflected off one another.

AI-Driven Upscaling

Called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, or PSSR for short, this new AI-driven technology will, according to Sony, be able to upscale games and target each pixel, making the image higher quality for the player. Sony said PSSR will be most noticeable when playing older games that could be blocky or seem pixelated, cleaning up those areas to bring the game closer to a high-resolution experience.

Verdict and sale date

While the PlayStation 5 is only four years old, video games are becoming more complex and require consoles that compute all the information quickly, as well as display the picture in the highest quality possible.

The new console follows the release of the PlayStation 5 Slim, which went on sale in November last year, and a portable version that requires a connection to a console named the PlayStation Portal, which was released this year. The announcement comes as Sony is readying to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the release of the first PlayStation.

The PlayStation 5 Pro console itself doesn’t look much different from its predecessor. The most noticeable change is the addition of three black bars across the middle. When standing upright, both the PS5 and PS5 Pro are the same height and width, showing that most changes were made to the computing power.

While the PlayStation 5 was first released in two versions, one with a disc drive and one without, the latest device will be without a disc drive as standard, but players can opt to attach a separate Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Drive, which costs Dh 449 ($120).

The PlayStation 5 Pro will be released on November 7, with pre-orders being taken from September 26. The retail price will be Dh 2,571 ($699.99).