The PS5 has been a monstrous, gargantuan eyesore the whole time I’ve had it. Few consoles are this ugly, a joke that has been made to death but which I will take the opportunity to clown on again: it looks like if Zaha Hadid’s ghost was forced to design a console in hell. There was ultimately one situation in which I was going to buy a PS5 Pro any time soon, a merciful out that the PS3 had when Sony made the PS3 slim, and that was just to make it look normal, like something a “professional” would have. Sony has instead opted to say no, it still looks like that, fuck you. Also, we put little fins on it, plus it costs $699.99 USD and does not ship with a disc drive.
Today, Mark Cerny unveiled the PS5 Pro in a technical presentation, and laid out the case for the existence of the device focusing on three points: more GPU power, better raytracing and Playstation specific AI-driven upscaling. I am sure there is a lot of fascinating technology under the hood of the PS5 Pro that I would care about. I spent three months comparing the performance of PC fans, so I am a mark for this stuff.
I know people are tempted to say “PS5 games look good already” and largely that is correct, but as someone who constantly goes back and forth between performance mode and fidelity mode, the PS5 does so by making a ton of compromises. Raytracing is something that a very small demographic of people want or notice, although I think people largely agree that it has been largely oversold. And though AI has become a catch-all term for rancid technology, AI upscaling in games has proven to be one of the most legitimate use cases. Cerny refers to this as Playstation Spectral Super Resolution or PSSR, and technologies like FSR and DLSS are proven technologies here. I am not so bold as to say there is no market for any of this.
But man. $699.99 USD! Woof! You can practically hear Kaz Hirai’s voice booming that MSRP in your head with the reverb of a grand cathedral.
I get that Apple and basically every cell phone maker has shown that a dedicated and sufficiently locked-in user base is willing to pay whatever premium to get the latest new toy. They’ll eat that slop! I also recognize that the cost of technology has changed. $700 dollars isn’t going to snag you a perfect gaming PC these days, although if you’re in for that much money you’re getting there! I will even acknowledge the argument for shifting away from discs and moving those resources to other parts of the device, although its omission feels particularly annoying for people who want to use the device for Blu-rays (although you can add one on for $79.99!). But Sony isn’t Apple; the phone upgrade ecosystem is different and at least Apple knows how to visually distinguish its products so the consumer goes “Oh hey, something new!”
You gotta give me something to work with here, Mark. I need a box that isn’t a monstrosity. I need something that lays down on its side normally and isn’t embarrassing to look at. You can do that while still keeping the strange design language of the PS5. I am a professional; I need a computer. Maybe they’re saving that for the PS6 or something, but that attitude does not instill confidence in me!
The PS3 level of hubris on display here is what gets me. When the PlayStation 5 launched it was a console that had one very good Astro game, and years later they added racing stripes to it and it has two very good Astro games. The case that has been made for the PlayStation ecosystem, even within their own technical demo, has become increasingly thin to the point where Astro Bot (as good as it is) can sometimes feel like a wake more than a celebration. But they can do that because they’re Sony and what’re you gonna do, buy an Xbox? Microsoft is mainly interested in being an AI blood cult until the market finally craters and punches a hole in the tech industry it may never recover from.
I am trying to imagine who the PS5 Pro is for, a person with enough disposable income to want high quality graphics, but not enough interest in a gaming PC. I know this person exists; I have met them. But I am skeptical that enough of them have 700 dollars kicking around to justify this, particularly when it still. Looks. Like. This.
