Sony announces the PS5 Pro with a larger GPU, advanced ray tracing, and AI upscaling
(www.theverge.com)
from ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 10 Sep 2024 15:18
https://lemmy.world/post/19611839
from ampersandrew@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world on 10 Sep 2024 15:18
https://lemmy.world/post/19611839
$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.
threaded - newest
Darn, I posted this earlier but sadly lemm.ee is having server issues. This’ll be the main thread, then.
Official Blog Post | PS5 Pro Reveal Trailer
The big question mark for me is that not only does it cost 800 euros, it does NOT come with a disc drive. There is no version of it with a disc drive like the PS5, you have to buy it as an accessory. I guess physical games really are going away.
The writing has been on the wall for physical games for some time. If you want to hold on to your games, DRM-free is better than physical.
Sadly not an option for console. I don’t own a PS5 currently but when I did own consoles I would trade games and buy used all the time, it’s a shame this might not be possible next generation.
I know it’s not an option for consoles. Since the 7th gen, it was always moving in this direction. It’s probably one of dozens of reasons that PC overtook consoles in market share.
were basically at the point on the timeline where PC and Mobile basically kills consoles.
Arguably, consoles are killing themselves.
We’ve been there basically since the PS4/XBONE made it clear the focus was on common architectures and software toolchains so that the majority of games could be multiplatform by default.
The issue is what it always has been. People are afraid of managing drivers and software and likely have horror stories about Windows and hate the average Linux evangelist with a passion. Whereas consoles “just work”
And price wise? A good gaming PC that will last you a generation or two tends to cost about what a console+refresh SKU does. AND you generally want to wait until a few years after the start of a console generation to buy that GPU (time blurs but I want to say RTX was the big thing when the PS5 launched and now it is upscaling). Which makes it even harder to sell because you are telling people to save up even more AND to wait.
Much like “The year of Linux gaming”, it is the kind of thing that some people claim is constantly happening and the rest of us acknowledge is unlikely to ever happen en masse.
the difference is at least you can see it in more real time numbers. Xbox is clearly a dying brand, which leaves Sonys home console sales for now (~60M) and the switch as a handheld device. Devs are already starting to port everything on PC, and 1st party game development rate has gone down a lot. 3rd party devs are also starting to abandon console exclusively/timed exclusively over time (capcom making the next monster hunter simul release on pc instead of a year and a half cadence, square enix backtracking on making final fantasy a timed exclusive due to not enough sales)
Japan is completely flipping its old image of PC being the device for porn addicts of years past and starting to heavily buy into pc too, which is why Valve went to attend Tokyo gameshow to pitch the steamdeck for japanese handheld players(which remain the majority of console purchases in japan)
Devs have been porting (or originating) everything to PC since the PS4/XBONE era. So a decade or so? And first party development is lower across the board (excluding all the stuff Microsoft was doing before they stared culling studios left and right) because first parties are expected to release CoD level games rather than cool and fun platformers (Astrobot aside). NOBODY is doing Last Of Us level games en masse.
But basically you are describing the paradigm that MS have arguably been working toward since the start of the current generation. The idea that it doesn’t actually matter what hardware you buy so long as you buy the services/games of one of the platform holders. If you REALLY love Halo? Get an XBOX. If you REALLY love The Last Of Us? Get a Playstation. With the rest being third parties. It… just so happened that Microsoft bought most of the big name third parties and are figuring out how to balance “CoD prints money” with “We want to sell xboxes”.
But that still leaves what box you buy. And, in that regard, consoles are still going to appeal to “gamers” more than a desktop ever will. Especially as more and more kids become adults who don’t even like laptops because EVERYTHING they do is on a tablet.
As for Japan: The key there is not “Steam”. it is “Deck”. Japan has ALWAYS loved handhelds. In large part because the cities don’t have a lot of space for a giant TV and an entertainment center that can fit however many cubic meters the PS5 Pro is at this point. And a bigass desktop PC is also going to be a major space issue when so many people are used to a laptop while they sit in a chair or whatever. And while I do think the Steam Deck is going to do wonders to increase PC market share in Japan, I still don’t see it significantly overtaking consoles for “gamer gaming” as it were and to instead be more slotted in the mobile space and indie games like Stardew Valley that run perfectly fine on ultrabooks.
im not saying consoles have 0 appeal and wont have buyers, its just that their market is in real time, decreasing while on pc has increased, especially post covid. with the advent of streaming, more and more people are shifting over to PC because of it. im not saying consoles are dead as in 0 sales, but the market is forever going to decrease for it, as more people get into pc, and those countries that cant afford to already got into mobile gaming (mobile gaming accounts for more than 50% of the profits of game sales)
I mean, console sales decreased in the 80s and never went back up, right?
The reality is that a lot of people haven’t migrated from the previous gen. Partially because of supply chain issues from COVID. Partially because of economic uncertainty.
Stuff goes in waves. Time will tell. But in terms of “core” gaming, consoles still continue to dominate the “casual” market. And I suspect we are more likely to see “core” gaming going away in favor of mobile than for PC to suddenly dominate at the AA/AAA level.
the problem is the covid supply chain ended a while ago and console sales havent drastically picked up since then. the PS5 has been orderable direct from sony for quite a long while now, and shortly after in stores. physical game sales (something console users champion, has gone way down (according to sony, only 30% of the sales are physical now)
Welcome to Walled Gardens. This is why so many of us swallowed our bile and rooted for Epic in their lawsuit against Apple.
Yeah. Almost no one I know buys physical anything anymore. Kinda sad to see it go. We really need to instill some better laws around ownership of digital goods.
I occasionally still buy physical on the few day one releases I get because somehow getting that delivered to my house can be £5 cheaper or more
That’s wild. I have had one or two work out around the same price. Like I bought the SMT V Steelbook or whatever cause I wanted that sick art on the case 👌
<img alt="" src="https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/cbd64918-ca12-4243-849b-828dc1e6599a.jpeg">
Laws aren’t going to help keep the price down which is also an issue apart from the digital ownership. It’s always cheaper to buy physical games as they go on sale. What’s stopping Sony from selling PS Exclusive for $100 only in their store?
Are we going to get restricted to only buying from Sony store or is Best Buy going to sell me a box with a digital code?
I think this shift will be the end of me buying newer games, period.
I am that person who doesn’t ever buy digital. I have not bought a single digital game thus far (I haven’t pirated a game since like 2006, either). I have certainly played some, like with the PS+ subscription I got for a year when it was pretty cheap, but I wouldn’t buy them because I can’t be sure I own them, and there’s really no way to transfer the license to resell them.
If I can’t buy physical media, I simply won’t buy the games. Maybe I’ll use subscription services now and then, but more likely I’ll either find a way to play free or won’t play them at all and find other stuff. I want the physical media because I’m poor, and having the option to sell them in a pinch is important to me if I’m going to shell out a significant amount for something I’ll probably only play once, particularly since there won’t be a used game market to reduce my spend. I haven’t had to sell my games in a very long time, so I have some 400 discs, but it’s something of a savings option that inflates alongside currency, and sometimes much more.
I rent games via gamefly, I’ll definitely keep using discs
I was very close to getting a digital PS5, but I still need the drive for my old PS4 games and movies. If I were just getting into Sony now though, I imagine the story would be different.
No disc drive and no fucking vertical stand/mount.
And yeah. Sony actually tried to “kill” physical games years ago with the PSP Go (?). But that was still when Gamestop and Best Buy were power houses and there was a lot of threats of “okay. We will give all the good shelf space to MS and Nintendo” and that went away fast.
But now brick and mortar are basically dead and everyone is periodically pissed at Amazon because they did an unsanctioned 2 dollar discount on a new game. So we are seeing the return.
In theory it annoys me because the playstations have always been okay-good media players and I have one of the gundam breakers on a physical disc because that was the cheapest way to get all the DLC. But for higher end digital media we are missing the codecs (because money) and physical digital media as a whole is going away. So… probably the right decision to wean people off it.
That said: Charging extra for the fucking vertical stand is just insane since a lot of us had tv stands that cannot fit the PS5 horizontally. But also, considering this looke like it is a bit taller/longer, it also can’t fit it vertically so… Even more reason to build a new HTPC over the next few years.
Remap, but also Rob Zacny (so you can never tell how much is actually a bit), did a REALLY good bit where they immediately priced out the new Remarkable with all the expensive attachments and… it is still (probably) cheaper than a PS5 Pro with a disc drive and a stand.
Remarkable is, presumably, a good bang-for-your-buck PC build?
No. Its a tablet. Marketed toward Professionals because of its focus on handwritten notes and sketches and the kind of thing where even the people who swear by it acknowledge it is insanely expensive and not something people should really buy.
Recurring theme on Remap but it very much highlights what category the ps5 pro is in. Same with comparing it to an apple vision pro.
They can still kind of kill physical games with good service. The whole “honey rather than vinegar” argument.
That’s what happened with the PSVita. While overpriced game cartridges existed, most of its lifespan people were buying its games digitally which worked great for indie developers that didn’t have a budget for physical releases.
I mean… that is what happened on PC. I know people forget we exist, but basically anyone who was “a gamer” back in the early 00s embraced digital distribution and Steam for a reason. Because after the third time that you have done four disc swaps and entered three 30 character keys to play Neverwinter Nights 1? That shit gets REAL old. Same with needing to be aware of what order to install what patches so as to not brick Dawn of War: Soulstornm and have to reinstall everything.
Contrast that with double clicking something in fricking Impulse and then waiting 30 minutes for it to install.
Which is kind of what you described with the Vita. Nobody wanted to have to carry two or three UMDs with them anywhere they want (let alone the rise of indie games that never had a digital release). Tinfoil, but I strongly suspect Nintendo made a big deal about not licking cartridges so that the Jeff Gerstmanns of the world would… lick that shit. Which led to the meme and people wanting to buy cartridges.
My memory may be hazy, but I recall the mainstream acceptance of the digital distribution model on PC as more of an early 2010’s thing. People hated Steam at launch, having yet another launcher you had to download which was basically just DRM for Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike.
It wasn’t until their marketplace opened up and they offered very attractive sales that people came around to it eventually.
As someone who buys expensive games, games I’m excited for, or just franchises I’m invested in, the death of discs is going to really make me reevaluate my gaming. I’ll probably at least wait for a sale for every single game if I can’t have a physical copy.
Almost all of my digital purchases are cheap games.
Wouldn’t it be funny if like no one bought it
Like that’s obviously not gonna happen but like wouldn’t it be funny
I thought the same thing about Concord, and then no one did buy it, and that too was funny.
Things like this actually makes me sad because you know who to blame for the games failure yet you also know who will take the blame and who will leave with a golden parachute.
I try to focus on the part where the thing they were building was inherently bad for video games, so this makes it less likely for it to happen again.
Would be funnier if only scalpers bought it and couldn’t unload them.
Ah, continuing with the ugly AF design language I see. Guess I’m skipping the entire PS5 gen then. See you guys for the PS6!
No kidding. I am shocked they somehow made it even uglier. Was really hoping for a simpler, less obnoxious design.
Are there enough exclusives to justify buying one? 🤔
If you have to ask, not really no.
concord
Too soon
A base PS5 maybe if you like the franchises and want a hassle-free “just gaming” experience on a console. Many of them exist on PC nowadays though. And 800€ for a console is just robbery
Only if you haven’t got a PC.
That’s a lot of money for a generation that just isn’t worth it.
$700 is too much money. Especially if you already have a PS5.
Fuck you, I’m trading up. Have fun living in the past!
PCs will always outperform consoles in both performance and capability, so have fun being a loser clinging to a failing industry.
This is dense. The base PS5 for a good portion of is life provided an unbeatable price to performance value. For a long time you’d be taking about $600 for just the GPU.
They’ve sold 60M units. This crap has been parroted by fanboys on both sides since the 80s.
We use our PS5 daily to both play games and watch media. It’s invaluable in our household. Using a PC for all that just seems to unnecessarily annoying, convoluted, and uncomfy. Sure, you could use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard to use it off the sofa but the sheer simplicity of just using a controller to do anything is just awesome. Not even touching upon not needing to do maintenance to the PC, buying newer components once older ones get inevitably obsolete etc etc.
For me personally, the PS5 has been a hit since day one. And yea, its price was a little steep upfront, but it’s been very much worth the money over the past four years. I don’t get people who unapologetically bash consoles from a sense of superiority. I thought we were past this lol
People get real mad when I tell them it’s cheaper because I can rent and resell games. Just yelling no way it’s cheaper because you’re spending $60/ yr for online. It’s become an identity for them.
The best part of the PS5 is that you can buy and sell discs at much more reasonable prices.
But my feeling is that they will soon start shipping consoles without a disk drive. Maybe PS 6 will be the last one.
Big concern of mine. Was a huge concern when steam ruined it on PC 20 years ago. Game fly if you are in the states is worth it’s weight in gold. I played at least $2000 worth of games last year for about $300.
You can install Plex/Jellyfin on the PC and get a much better experience, watch on the phone, tablet, serve multiple clients, etc.
So your argument is unsubstantial.
🙄👌👍
Ok
How much were the ps5s? 500?
That would make their sales total 30 Billyun. Wow
Have fun insulting random people, love to see how that turns out for you 😂
Sweet irony.
What a weird thing to say
Sony is definitely living in the past, showing multiple years old upgraded PS4 games to promote the PS5 Pro
You’re not clever.
I agree! I wanted one for another room in my house but at this price point no way I am doing that!!!
With the last gen and the current gen being basically PC’s why not just go the PC route at this point? I am kind of at that point right now
You might look into the mini PC form factor and throw Bazzite on it for a Steam console-esque experience.
I have a few of these running HoloISO running around the house to stream graphic intense games from my main rig and to run smaller games locally. Runs fine with a 680m iGPU and I never have to leave the room I’m in (garage included) to play games if I want.
It cost more than a console, but far less than the 5 consoles I’d have to put out for that kind of convenience.
That’s actually why I went with the Xbox this cycle. I got a series x for the large TV and a $200 (on sale) series S for the smaller one (although we usually just use a computer monitor and play side by side on the couch).
If you are the only one playing the PlayStation, you can do remote play via the computer, phone ,or even from a PS4.
$200 extra for reflections between cars in GT7 or slightly better shadow resolution is not worth it IMO.
My PS5 already collects dust as it is, since there are next to no games that actually make use of its hardware that I cannot already buy on PC to run at higher settings.
How good is the GPU? Is it better than my 4070ti super boi?
Not even close. Your GPU decimates it.
PS5 pro: 33.5 TF 4070ti super: 44 TF
All teraflops are not the same but this is a big enough delta for me to say no, your card is better.
What? There’s cards with both
tiandsuperin the name‽What game would even justify that price tag lol and no disk tray.
SIX HUNDRED AND NINETY NINE US DOLLARS
FOR NO DISC DRIVE
I can’t see how this is worth it for anyone. Are there even games that are pushing the current PS5?
No disc drive either.
I’m out
There are games that perform poorly, but to my understanding that’s not the hardware’s fault
You could buy a pretty nice PC for $700
Which could play MS and Sony games. I don’t think consoles make much sense nowadays.
And the best part is you don’t have to pay for online and you won’t need to rebuy your games each new console generation.
First one I’ll grant you, but there was no rebuying from last gen to current gen for anything non-Nintendo.
If you pay for the discs, you can’t use the discs on future generations. Right? Ps4 can’t read ps3 or ps2 discs. Xbox one can read xbox and 360 discs, but they limit it to only specific games. So in general, you have to buy it once again on their online store, if its available at all.
While pc can play old games, you can sometimes run into compatibility issues. Especially games in the ps1/2/3 era.
Og Xbox and xbox 360 games work without much issues on Xbox one and series XS. Ps4 and Xbox one games are 99% playable on Series XS and Ps5.
Yeah, idk why Ps4 has no backwards compatibility. PS3 (fat) was backwards compatible with PS 1+2, and PS5 is backwards compatible for PS4. I didn’t buy a PS4 for that exact reason, and was lucky enough to get my hands on a PS5 during launch to play all the PS4 games I missed.
With all the niche Japanese games I like slowly coming to PC, I probably won’t buy a new console ever again. (As an aside, if anyone has a spare fat PS3 they’re willing to sell for parts…)
It just feels so anti-consumer and everyones forgets about it and they just happily pay for content which can no longer be owned only rented.
I agree. One of the few reasons I still stuck to consoles is because I could buy the physical games and have it on my shelf forever. That’s going the way of the dinosaurs, and while I love that things are more accessible via Steam or whatever, I can’t let my friends borrow my games, or pass it along to someone else to enjoy if I didn’t like a game as much.
I also just love collecting and displaying game cases and steelbooks and stuff. That’s rarely a thing anymore, either.
The lack of backwards comparability is because of the large difference in architecture.
The PS2 was a128 bit custom processor, the PS3 had PS2 hardware in the original fat versions to achieve backwards compatibility, it was dropped to reduce the price.
The PS3 was a 64 bit (I think) custom PowerPC processor.
With the PS4 Sony switched to x86_64 processors making the console essentially a PC with bespoke custom hardware. The PS5 is the same but better speced components as the tech moved on. That’s why the PS4 & 5 are compatible, they are essentially using the same architecture.
Microsoft is a similar story but they went all in on emulation of their old consoles which is why only certain games are allowed, they only allow the ones tested to work with the emulator.
Thanks for jogging my memory, I completely forgot how different the PS3 architecture is compared to the other PlayStations and also the 360. Same reason why emulation for it is so hard (and why MGS4 has no modern ports 🥲)
The PS3 fat could only read PS2 disks because it had stripped down PS2 hardware included. It was effectively a PS2/3 combined. This was part of what drove the cost up, so they gutted that hardware from the slim.
PS4s can’t read PS3 disks because the PS3 used a bespoke PowerPC based chipset that was a colossal pain in the ass to develop for. So for the PS4 to have backwards compatibility, they would have had to either A, include PS3 hardware in the PS4 (expensive) or B, create an efficient software translation layer/built in emulator (see “pain in the ass”).
From what I have heard, they smartened up with the PS5. It’s basically just a faster PS4. At it’s core, it’s based on very similar hardware, so it’s easy to make PS4 games run without issue, but the boost in performance allows games designed specifically to take advantage of it.
It did when the ps5 first came out. $500 for it was a steal back then. I wanted to build a PC at the time but due to the crazy GPU prices and low stock for other parts I decided it was best to wait. Got a ps5 instead (was also hard to get as well) and thought it was absolutely worth the price for the experience it offered. Just built the pc I wanted last fall shortly after prices started dropping. First time ever I made a good choice.
Yeah, after that time I really didn’t think consoles would be as much as a midrange PC. And yet, here we are. Feels like Sony’s back to late PS2 era levels of hubris now.
Even at the time it came out you could have built a pc with an RTX 3060 for that price, which would outperform the PS5 by a big margin and have a way bigger game library
Get yours! Now with 50% more AI™
Hurry while stocks last!
That’s why you build your own. It’s actually really easy to do.
Depending on how much you care about visuals, yeah.
A decent GPU will often be the price of an entire console. That said, even if you go with high-end hardware I found that eventually the cost will make up for itself for not having to pay for PSN to make use of and play on the internet. Or the fact that games are very often priced up to 50% more on the PS store than those on PC because there are no competing stores.
You absolutely will not get anything that runs even remotely decently with ray tracing on in any recent title.
For the fair comparison you’re only allowed to buy new, not used parts. So, for 700$ you won’t even be able to put together a decent system with a 3070 in it.
“Oh but i don’t care about ray tracing” – nice copium.
I got a cheaper AMD GPU specifically because I do not give a fuck about ray tracing. Also just look at the steamdeck, you can get great performance for very cheap nowadays. It might not be as powerful or nice as a PS5 Pro, but the $700 computer has many advantages in its favor
“Performance”.
PS5 mostly runs connected to a 4k TV. I wanna see your steamdeck do that.
Is that a PS5 in your pocket or you’re just happy to see me?
They need to pump out more games to justify this. I see no reason to upgrade as mine already sits and collects dust. The controller is super awesome tho, use it all the time for my PC.
Sony thinks so too, which is why they increase the controller’s price, lol.
I pretty much only use mine to play the exclusives since I don’t have a good PC and watch films on 4K blu-rays. My Series X gets far more use (more storage, more games in my library since I’ve been using Xbox since the 360 and a more comfortable controller).
I love sunny and have 2 ps5s. This thing is DOA.
The PS5 is already a very powerful piece of hardware that most devs aren’t making full use of. I honestly can’t see any justification in a hardware upgrade other than some Sony execs thinking it’ll be the end of the world if they don’t put out something new to make some profit line continue to go up.
This generation is already pretty weak, and it was hard to justify the original PS5 which, after a whopping four years, still has too few exclusive titles to justify the increased price point. Now they are asking for $700 (and they increased the controller’s price, too), but there’s still too few next gen titles, and it doesn’t even come with basic features like a disc tray and a vertical mount. Not even a better form factor, it’s the same old ugly case, but somehow bigger.
The only premium thing about this thing is the price tag. $700 dollars but €800, because apparently they are dominating the European market so much that they don’t even have to try to sell it at an honest price point. With all those money you can just buy a PC. I honestly don’t think that many people who are interested in the console market (which, historically, has always been a “low budget” entry into modern gaming) would be willing to spend so much money on one.
I guess we circled back to the PS3 era, when Sony got drunk with overconfidence. Only, this time they’ll get away with it because their main competitor is somehow even more incompetent than them. I wonder if the handheld PC market will pose a threat to their dominance in the future - at the moment, it’s a very small niche.
It’s just so sad. I remember back when the PS4 Pro came out and you could trade in your old PS4 for a little on top to get a Pro at GameStop. It was a night and day difference going from a base PS4 to a Pro - and merely for the price of the console, 3 random games off a list of curated games, two controllers, iirc, and 100€. It was straight gas for me.
Paying 300€ on top - realistically even more because you’re not gonna sell a used PS5 for 500€ nowadays - plus the money for a disc drive and a vertical stand would set you back like 900-1000€. Completely out of their minds
Not really on topic, but AI upscaling is no joke. It’s actually very useful and saves alot processing power. Same with the extra fps, making a 30fps into a 60fps with ease.
Don’t they already use FSR on the 5?
FSR doesn’t use AI hardware. The original comment is overselling it a bit, but something AI-driven like DLSS does offer substantial (if slightly blurry) framerate gains.
No game should be running down at 60fps these days, especially with any sort of upscaling. Native performance should be the only measured metric, no need for shortcuts when hardware is as good as it is.
At this price I’m so glad I decided to go for a slim instead of holding out for the pro. Absolutely no way.
So far I’ve traded in all my Playstations for the latest versions. But this price-hike and no disc-drive are a dealbreaker. Guess I’m going for a new gaming PC and a Steam Deck now. Too bad Sony, you messed up.
Is there an eli5 on how “ai upscaling” is less (or even equally) technologically demanding than just putting in better hardware?
The game is rendered at a lower resolution, this saves a lot of resources. This isn’t a linear thing, lowering the resolution reduces the performance needed by a lot more than you would think. Not just in processing power but also bandwidth and memory requirements. Then dedicated AI cores or even special AI scaler chips get used to upscale the image back to the requested resolution. This is a fixed cost and can be done with little power since the components are designed to do this task.
My TV for example has an AI scaler chip which is pretty nice (especially after tuning) for showing old content on a large high res screen. For games applying AI up scaling to old textures also does wonders.
Now even though this gets the AI label slapped on, this is nothing like the LMMs such as chat GPT. These are expert systems trained and designed to do exactly one thing. This is the good kind of AI that’s actually useful instead of the BS AI like LLMs. Now these systems have their limitations, but for games the trade off between details and framerate can be worth it. Especially if our bad eyes and mediocre screens wouldn’t really show the difference anyways.
lol, trying to hedge against downvotes from the anti-AI crowd?
I get that much. Or at least, I get that’s the intention.
This us the part I struggle to believe/understand. I’m roughly aware of how resource intensive upscaling is on locally hosted models. The necessary tech/resources to do that to 4k+ in real time (120+ fps) seems at least equivalent, if not more expensive, to just rendering it that way in the first place. Are these “scaler chips” really that much more advanced/efficient?
Further questions aside, I appreciate the explanation. Thanks!
Rendering a 3D scene is much more intensive and complicated than a simple scaler. The scaler isn’t advanced at all, it’s actually very simple. And it can’t be compared with running a large model locally. These are expert systems, not large models. They are very good at one thing and can do only that thing.
Like I said the cost is fixed, so if the scaler can handle 1080p at 120fps to upscale to 2K, then it can always handle that. It doesn’t matter how complex or simple the image is, it will always use the same amount of power. It reads the image, does the calculation and outputs the resulting image.
Rendering a 3D scene is much much more complex and power intensive. The amount of power highly depends on the complexity of the scene and there is a lot more involved. It needs the gpu, cpu, memory and even sometimes storage, plus all the bandwidth and latency in between.
Upscaling isn’t like that, it’s a lot more simple. So if the hardware is there, like the AI cores on a gpu or the dedicated upscaler chip, it will always work. And since that hardware will normally not be heavily used, the rest of the components are still available for the game. A dedicated scaler is the most efficient, but the cores on the gpu aren’t bad either. That’s why something like DLSS doesn’t just work on any hardware, it needs specialized components. And different generations and parts have different limitations.
Say your system can render a game at 1080p at a good solid 120fps. But you have a 2K monitor, so you want the game to run at 2K. This requires a lot more from the system, so the computer struggles to run the game at 60 fps and has annoying dips in demanding parts. With upscaling you run the game at 1080p at 120fps and the upscaler takes that image stream and converts it into 2K at a smooth 120fps. Now the scaler may not get all the details right, like running native 2K and it may make some small mistakes. But our eyes are pretty bad and if we’re playing games our brains aren’t looking for those details, but are instead focused on gameplay. So the output is probably pretty good and unless you were to compare it with 2K native side by side, probably you won’t even notice the difference. So it’s a way of having that excellent performance, without shelling out a 1000 bucks for better hardware.
There are limitations of course. Not all games conform to what the scaler is good at. It usually does well with realistic scenes, but can struggle with more abstract stuff. It can get annoying halos and weird artifacts. There are also limitations to what bandwidth it can push, so for example not all gpus can do 4K at a high framerate. If the game uses the AI cores as well for other stuff, that can become an issue. If the difference in resolution is too much, that becomes very noticeable and unplayable. Often there’s also the option to use previous frames to generate intermediate frames, to boost the framerate with little cost. In my experience this doesn’t work well and just makes the game feel like it’s ghosting and smearing.
But when used properly, it can give a nice boost basically for free. I have even seen it used where the game could be run at a lower quality at the native resolution and high framerate, but looked better at a lower resolution with a higher quality setting and then upscaled. The extra effects outweighed the small loss of fidelity.
That is interesting. Thanks for the extra info!
It started as good tech to make GPUs last longer, but now is a crutch that even top notch hardware like a 4090 needs to actually achieve playable performance with ray tracing at high resolutions. And that hardware is already way overpriced, imagine the price of something that could do it natively.
Huh, I wasn’t aware that 4090s use similar tech. That sheds light on a few things. Thanks!
gta
gta 6 gets delayed… sony releases this early to sell more ps6’s ?
I’m sure at some point devs will make good use of the extra power. And by that point this puppy will be half the cost MSRP to snatch up.
Not worth it. The PS5 games catalogue is piss poor compared to when the PS4 Pro released.
Kinda hard to make a solid catalogue when you follow the live service trend and your projects flop one after another.
Frankly that’s just thinking with only PS5 exclusives in mind.
A lot of people, probably the vast majority, don’t get an Xbox or PlayStation for the exclusives. They just get one because they don’t own or want a gaming PC and look for the easier more accessible solution.
So to them the catalogue is just fine because they don’t get the console just for the exclusives.
Not sure what the point of downvoting me is, but I’d rather be interested to hear people’s counter-arguments instead. Because a lot of people seem to just assume that many console-owners have both a console and gaming PC.
If what you said was true, Xbox would be in a much better position though, COD and EAFC are there too after all.
I’m not saying that exclusives didn’t play a part entirely, but even when the PS5 was hard to get by it was still cheaper than the Xbox that were in stock (where I live).
Despite the low amount of exclusive games it would still be an easy pick to get a PS5 instead, if people decided to upgrade at some point. And since a lot of cross-platform/console games were still coming out on the old consoles for a while there was little reason to get an Xbox instead of a PS if they wanted a new console right then right there.
I dunno I haven’t really been excited for any of the games released over the last couple years. It seems like nothing but legacy games like COD/Battlefield/Destiny and a few gems like Elden Ring. Most of these big studios seem to be laying off employees or shutting down instead of releasing new games. Part of this is just me being burnt out on gaming, but with so many studios struggling, it seems like it’s more than just me feeling like this.
Thing is that isn’t true for everyone, I am done with games like CoD and FIFA, but a huge majority of players is not. Hence why these games keep selling just fine.
Myself, I count the catalog of PS+ as an “exclusive feature”, plus it’s nice to play some of the PS4 games that struggled on a better machine. I loaded my God of War save and went from 30 to 60fps, which was great (sad that it was one of few games to offer PS5 enhancements in the PS4 version)
The price increase is insane. That does not seem to scale in comparison with what you’ll get in return over a regular PS5, especially if you’re gonna be forced to buy the digital editions from the PS store, which are outside of the sales often the most expensively priced versions too, I’ve practically only bought second-hand discs for my PS5 because of that.
So either games will start running at higher framerates on real 4K, like 60FPS and up. Or developers will get lazy and stop bothering to optimise for the older generation of PS5, which will then be an excuse to upgrade to the more expensive edition to play at 4K and/or 60FPS.
I really hope the latter won’t be a thing for the sake of both players and game development, there’s been enough unoptimised shit lately and I hope we can move forward again.
That optimization part is what worries me. I still remember games like Control & Cyberpunk being basically unplayable unless you had a PS4 Pro.
Yeah I’m afraid that stuff like GTA6 might run like absolute dogshit on the old PS5, because they will see the opportunity to make use of the better hardware to sell the 4K and 60FPS. No doubt even Sony will try to push this, trying to sell more of these Pros.
I do hope we will move forward, but I think money and greed will play too much of a role in this. We don’t even really need a PS5 Pro right now, looking at the current line-up of games that run fine on the old PS5, even in 4K and 60FPS, as long as developers spend the time to optimise their games instead of throwing everything on to raytracing (which I find is still in a very experimental phase).
Yep, people have rose tinted glasses but GTA V had a massive pop in issue on the consoles it released, the proper version was the PS4 one. Or PC.
I’m still waiting for a reason to get a PS5 at all, everything I’ve been interested still got released on PS4 too - except for one single game.
I really don’t care for better specs anymore, I probably couldn’t even tell PS4 and PS5 games apart without a side-by-side comparison. Not to mention, to see a difference at all I’d need a new TV on top of the console. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
One major improvement with the PS5 is the instant loading times. I don’t think this thing will be any faster in that regard but it’s a major improvement over the PS4. The other improvement over my original PS4 is that it doesn’t sound like a jet engine after 20 minutes of running.
Ray tracing is cool but what console games are even using it at this point? It’s like them advertising “8K capable” as if anyone gives a shit about that during a time that 4k is just barely becoming the standard for most.
Consider opening up that PS4 and cleaning out any dust. It doesn’t fix the noise completely, but it can make a big difference.
You can do an SSD upgrade to reduce load times.
Consoles are a dying breed, especially Xbox and Playstation. Almost every exclusive ends up on PC anyway now, even then I personally don't think there's any game worth spending this much on hardware to play. There's literally no point in buying an Xbox or Playstation unless you really really don't want to bother with a PC setup.
I bet the market will end up as just PC and mobile. I mean the PC market share has already overtaken consoles.
Yeah nah
We will see when Playstation 6 releases, its unlikely to sell as much as PS5 did, let alone PS4. Microsoft already realised the decline and are jumping into games as a service for the Xbox brand, ideally they would want you to just stream their games, as shitty as that is. With Xbox gone, there's no competition and with Sony being Sony, they are going to abuse that to squeeze any extra money they can from people still willing.
PC became a lot more affordable and accessible in the last decade and it doesn't lock you into a closed ecosystem, you can upgrade when you want, you don't have to pay subscriptions to play online games.
Kids are more exposed to PC gaming than ever before, with all the popular 'content creators' primarily playing on PC, so they are naturally swayed to it more than consoles.
I hear so many stories of people switching to PC, friends asking me for advice for what to buy for themselves or their children.
The writing is on the wall, it would take a big change to swing back the other way. There's a reason they are dying for GTA 6 to release.
Most of the replies about ps5 pro is complaining about the price. Your point is, PC is somehow a better choice while the video card alone cost this much or more.
So no, I don’t think consoles will disappear, more likely streaming will improve to the point of being a real alternative and that will take over the people buying consoles. In fact it could be an alternative to PC as well, for non-competitive gaming.
The sales decline is because console companies don’t provide good enough reason to upgrade, and the market is saturated, not because people moving to Pc. Here I am rocking my xbox one pro still with no desire to upgrade.
That's just not true. You can make an entire PC for the price of the PS5 Pro. You can get a GPU that is a bit more powerful than a PS5 Pro GPU for ~$300. People normally spend more on PCs though because of the longevity it provides and you can use it for a lot more than just games. Just looking at Steam data, there's a yearly increase of MAUs (their concurrent count just peaked 3 days ago at 37.6M) where Playstation has plateaued.
Time will tell, but I think consoles will fade away, either through lack of appeal or turning into stream boxes as you say. Thanks for the conversation!
If a PC GPU is only slightly better than a console counterpart, typically its games will run slightly worse - since it loses the benefit of devs spending time optimizing for that profile.
You can adjust settings on PC, so you can trade off some useless post processing and other settings to push the frame rates way higher than console games, which are generally 60fps (or 120fps in some cases, if you run "performance mode").
To top it off, what matters at the end of the day js this - people generally don’t care about graphics anymore!
Even if you end up with graphics that are worse than a console, you still have:
PS5 Pro makes absolutely no sense to me.
This GPU bump is pretty big it’s almost a PS6. Keeping the old Zen2 CPU is disappointing though.
I don’t know if It turns out that I was stupid for not buying the original PS5 or holding out for a Pro one even from back then.
I was looking forward to this a lot because I could get the better version from day 1 and have a lot of games to play from taking and borrowing my brother’s disc games.
I guess I’ll get the XBSX for GTA VI when it comes.
Not like holding out matters now, they just raised the price in Japan for the 3rd time, second wind said the controller got 5 dollars more expensive, you can only save with used nowadays.
Why not go PC at this point. Modern consoles are locked pre-built PCs and paying $700 for a locked system is crazy.
Because of the hope that at some point someone smart will discover an exploit that will allow everyone to install their own homebrew and possibly a completely different OS which will result in a good spec PC with powerful GPU for extremely cheap.
I just remembered china was selling PCs with the PS5 hardware I think ltt(fuck them but irrelevant) did a video on it long ago and I think if you were just to dump the bios from that to a normal PS5 idk what the difference would be
SEVEN HUNDRED US DOLLARS!
Sony costumers need to remind them of the PS3.
IT’S RIDGE RACER! RIIIDGE RACER! Remember that one?
I hope that series comes back someday.
Awesome, I can pay $700 to play Bloodborne in 30 fps
No no they’re going to make Bloodbore 30th anniversary re-release PS5 Pro Exclusive with 45 fps
It’s a pity SONY didn’t have any games to announce alongside the new console. There is nothing or there I feel like I need more power to play, and I already completed games they demoed, sometimes years ago.
Absolutely agree with this statement. They seem to have no pipeline for keeping up with this console lifecycle.
As the owner of a Series X and PS5, they’re just streaming boxes that I occasionally use to play stuff that won’t run under Proton.
What do I do with my PS5 discs if I buy the Pro one day? Are they just unusable? Will I be able to get a digital copy for free since I already paid them for the disc they stopped supporting?
It seems like there’s no sane migration path from PS5 with disc drive to the PS5 Pro.
There’s an external drive accessory you can buy from them for about $80.
Oh, ok then. Guess who didn’t read the article. :-)
I personally find it pretty horrendously insulting they put out a “Pro” console that can’t play the fucking game discs unless you pay them for an additional accessory.
Not a console gamer, but I’m sure they looked at the statistics and saw most players don’t buy a physical disk anyway. Why make the machine more expensive for an accessory that probably isn’t being used. On my computer I haven’t had a physical disk drive in probably 15y and haven’t ever thought that I needed one.
Well, sure, but that's also because on PC I can choose to buy DRM-free games and have guaranteed backwards compatibility for the foreseeable future. Plus it's not a closed system based on a console that launched with a drive. People (me included) already own PS5 discs, not from a previous generation, but from this one. It's bad enough that I need to keep my PS3 around to play PS3 games, it'd be absurd to not be able to play PS5 games I already own because the thing is physically unable to ingest them out of the box.
So yeah, for people in that position the Pro is a hundred bucks more expensive than it says on the sticker, which is already a ridiculously high number.
The side-by-sides are definitely diminished returns compared to earlier gens where hardware bumps had very noticeable gains.
I am sure the performance is measurably better than the base PS5, but I don’t think it’s $200-plus-separate-disc-drive better.
I also found the game choices they used for some of these comparisons to be odd picks. Sure you have “Made for PS5” exclusives like the new Ratchet and Clank, Returnal, and Spider-Man 2, but they also heavily showcased:
The Last of Us Part 2
God of War: Ragnarok
Ghost of Tsushima
Horizon: Forbidden West
Control
All of those are last-gen games that received PS5 enhancements. Being on a base PS5, I already feel like I am getting the “better” experience compared to the default for those games, so why upgrade?
Well, as a PC gamer, there’s a bunch of settings you can turn on from “last Gen” games to make them look better. Just because they ran on those machines doesn’t mean you were getting the best version. If you’re playing on console you’re never getting the best version. This newer one can just turn on more settings and a higher resolution and framerate than the previous ones. I wish they’d let players decide what settings they want themselves, but sadly that’s not happening on console anytime soon I don’t think.
Chasing the “best version” is a fool’s errand, though. Unless you’re buying top-of-the-line hardware every cycle, you’ll never have the best. And even then, there are games that seem to target future hardware by having settings so high not even top-end PCs can max them out comfortably, and other games that are just so badly optimized they’ll randomly decide they hate some feature of your setup and tank the performance, too.
Everyone has their threshold for what looks good enough, and they upgrade when they reach that point. I used my last PC for 10 years before finally upgrading to a newer build, and I’m hoping to use my current one as long as well.
But just based on the displayed difference in performance between the base PS5 and the PS5 Pro, it doesn’t seem like a good investment for what benefits you get. It’s like paying Apple prices for marginally better hardware, and with overpriced
wheelsdisc drive sold separately.For sure, trying to max out everything is a bad idea. You can always have from FPS and higher resolution, for example. My point is just that “last Gen” doesn’t mean anything. The previous console versions couldn’t max the games out if they had graphics options. The game being older doesn’t mean it doesn’t take advantage of more advanced setting with better hardware.
I think chasing high graphics settings in general is a dumb idea. My favorite games are low fidelity indie games that do interesting things (right now Ostranauts, but also Factorio, Dwarf Fortress, and so many others). The games that max out my hardware are generally worse games. If you’re selling your game based on graphics then you aren’t selling it based on gameplay. I know console players generally seem to care about “realistic” graphics more, but it’s a fool’s errand.
Man, this is true now, but this conversation makes me very nostalgic for the good old days of the 1080Ti, where PC games were absolutely a "max out and forget" affair.
Sure, that was because monitors were capped out at 1080p60, by and large. These days people are trying to run 20 year old games at 500fps or whatever. But man, the lack of having to think about it was bliss.
youtube.com/watch?v=MApTG1wapJA&si=6CIbRLjbfUwV29…
Great video showing the difference of the two
I do feel for Sony's PR teams. Trying to explain the concept of visual improvements in 4K over Youtube's increasingly vaseline-smeared compression is an impossible task.
I already feel like a chump for getting the PS5. There’s hardly any games for it. Hell, there are some games I can’t play on it. I can’t imagine what’s changed so drastically in the last couple years to even be worth an upgrade.
What can’t you play?
Some of the transfered PS3 games (Katamari was one I remember). The Tomb Raider Puzzle game glitches (doesn’t on the PS4), and it seems any game that uses an app (tried to play a trivia game with the family and it didn’t work until we went to the PS4).
Not anything life or death, big named stuff works fine, but it’s just annoying to have to go back to the PS4 to have things play right.
At the beginning of this generation, I planned to buy a used PS5 when the Pro version was coming. I did not know that the PS5 would have almost no games for me (especially because they released the big ones for me on PC), the base PS5 would cost even more, and most people will not upgrade to the Pro because of its absurd pricing (note because it’s not worth it, but because the market for it is likely very niche).
I guess I will just skip Sony’s platform for this generation.
If consoles want to remain relevant in the age of the gaming PC, they have to try harder than being locked-down gaming PCs.
Free and simple multiplayer, subsidised hardware, and physical game ownership were staples of most consoles for years but now the urge to turn every device into an “everything machine” has kneecapped the very purpose of these devices.
At best, these are slightly less hassle and slightly more social than a gaming PC. At worst, they’re as anti-social and user-hostile without the cost benefit that once made them genuinely preferable.
Sony will try to drag this thing out at least one more generation. If that goes like this one–and it has room to actually go worse–then Sony will have to make some hard decisions.
I love the price. At $700 it’s just what I needed to convince my friend who was holding out for the pro to move on to PC. $700 buys a pretty decent AMD card nowadays. Shit for $800 we’re talking decent refurbished gaming PCs.
Sony’s problems are twofold:
If they had plenty of the latter, they could weather this. But there are still games releasing for the PS4, and they have had 1, maybe 2 PS5 releases that would qualify as first party this year (that don’t bubble down to PC).
I don’t see the point in this. I’m already planning to get a PC (and a Radeon 7900 XTX will always outperform a PS5), so it’s just more money for no benefit.
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