PS4 Pro was still obscenely underpowered. Jaguar was terrible at PS4's original launch, and the boost on the Pro was marginal because it was still the same terrible underlying design.

Going into the PS5 pro, everyone projected this pricing, because it's actually modern hardware and their costs have went up instead of down.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I imagine they'll make money from the kinds of people who absolutely must have the latest and greatest available tech for everything. Personally, I wouldn't bother even if money weren't an issue.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Computing hardware when the PS4 and PS4 pro came out was still in the before times when new hardware meant doing more for the same money. It’s been a minute since those times and that isn’t really something Sony has any control over.

Meanwhile you also have a weird phenomenon that didn’t exist during the PS4 generation where you have a huge spike in inflation between your base console and pro launch. When the PS5 launched at cost $500, but $500 then is more than $600 now. The PS5 pro is really only $100 more in 2024 money than the PS5 was at launch.

Maybe Sony is making the wrong move here but understanding the market and economy as it is today, I’m not sure what else they could have done besides not launch a pro console at all.

[–] samus12345@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There's always a market for people who want the latest and greatest thing, so they'll make money off of it, but since most people will have the base model (even more than those who stuck with a base PS4, I imagine), all games will be designed with that in mind.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

I don’t agree with that really. I think PS5 games are already designed with the PS5 Pro in mind. We already have difference performance profiles where you can have 60FPS OR 4k OR Ray tracing.

If all the Pro means is being able to play 60FPS at 4k with Raytracing, the $700 price point would be very attractive. You won’t get that with a $700 PC that’s for sure.

[–] Jrockwar@feddit.uk 1 points 2 months ago

I think 60 fps at 4K with raytracing are maybe PS6 specs, not PS5 pro. I hope I'm wrong, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[–] PunchingWood@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I will have to wait and see, but if it competes with high-end hardware on PC in terms of 4K support and high framerates I think €800 is pretty reasonable. I see people online claiming that it should've been like €600 or maybe €650. But a RTX4080 GPU alone is more expensive than that already, and it's not even top of the line. But if you want advanced raytracing, maxed out settings and 4K you'll definitely need something in that price range of GPUs at minimum.

People don't NEED to upgrade to the PS5 Pro, it seems more like an alternative for people who already own 4K TVs and want to make better use of it. I'd be more annoyed about the lack of a disc drive.

That said, I think the real issue is if developers start abandoning the original PS5 hardware in favor of the new ones and start getting lazy and stop optimising their games for the older PS5. Which would in fact make the upgrade to a Pro almost mandatory if you want to keep playing at reasonable framerates.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It won't come close to a 4080 so that isn't a sensible comparison. I think it's estimated to be slower than the regular 4070.

IDK why you mention 4k and max settings and high frame rates, PS5 Pro won't do these things. It's not even twice as fast as the regular PS5 which in many games drops below 1080p 60fps medium settings.

[–] PunchingWood@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Which is why I said it's wait and see.

The PS5 already does 4K and higher framerates, for at least most of their optimised first-party games, I'd just expect a Pro version to handle it better on top of more traytracing, otherwise what even would be the point of upgrading for such a high price.

A 4070 is still like €600+, if you want more advanced raytracing stuff you'll have to go for 4080 and up, which means easily exceeding €1000 for a GPU.

This is why I compared the PS5 Pro to the 4080, because they claim to do advanced raytracing on the Pro. Which is why I think a price of €800, which sits between that of a 4070 and 4080, is quite reasonable. People want high visual fidelity on 4K and high framerates, but still expect to pay far less than high-end PC hardware, I don't think that's a realistic expectation.

[–] Die4Ever@programming.dev 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Watch Digital Foundry, very very few AAA PS5 games can do 4k AND 60fps (which is what I assume you mean by "high framerates", although 60 isn't really that high it's just mid). Probably none of those are doing ray tracing at the same time. Most PS5 games have upscaling enabled at all times because they're rendering at much lower internal resolutions. PS5 Pro is not even twice as powerful, it's not going to be capable of pushing 4x as many pixels per second. There's a reason why they're still talking about their upscaling algorithms.

"Advanced ray tracing" is not a technical term that exists it's just marketing speak. And obviously they couldn't say path tracing because they won't be doing much of that like a 4070 or 4080 can do.

Here Digital Foundry is comparing the PS5Pro to the RTX 3070 Ti, which is much weaker than the 4070 https://youtu.be/W2wOn8zS8dU?t=3577 (the 4070 has more VRAM than the 3070 Ti that they mention there)

The 4070 is similar to the 3080, which is a pretty decent lead over the 3070 Ti. The 4080 is leagues above them all.

https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4070-founders-edition/images/relative-performance-rt-3840-2160.png

[–] PunchingWood@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

I know they cheat their way through abusing terms and doing stuff like checkerboard 4K and frame generation and what not.

The point is that speaking to the casual masses it will still be a tremendous visual upgrade up from what the original PS5 is capable of. Or at least I assume so, because again, otherwise there would be very little reason to even upgrade. Visually games like God of War Ragnarok and Horizon Forbidden West are fine on the PS5, even on performance modes (which does run at 60 FPS, frame gen or not). And frankly to me it competes on the same level as visually high-end games on PC (I have a PS5 and a high-end PC). We'll see if the quality difference will be worth it on the Pro, I frankly doubt it but maybe for more casual players that don't have a high-end PC to compare to it will.

[–] borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 months ago

I mean developers still haven’t really abandoned the PS4 have they? I’ve pretty much stopped playing games on my PS4, but last I checked any new release I would have wanted was coming out on both PS4 and PS5.

[–] lath@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Going eco is all the rage, so probably tree fiddy.