The big takeaways are that the upgraded console has a faster GPU, better ray tracing and AI-driven upscaling, all of which mean games run smoother and look better than ever before.
The good news arguably ends there, as it was also revealed that the PS5 Pro will cost an eye-watering $699 / £699. Gulp.
As you can imagine, the reaction to the pricing hasn't been particularly positive, which is hardly a massive shock when you consider much of the world is gripped by a cost-of-living crisis and the games industry has seen a flood of layoffs over the past year or so.
Is now the right time to release a console that costs seven hundred bucks? Probably not, but it's important to remember that this isn't the first time a console manufacturer has expected its customers to pay a premium for the latest and greatest tech.
Heck, it wasn't all that long ago that Sony launched the PS3 at $599 (for the top-spec 60GB HDD model, admittedly – the 20GB version was $499). However, it's important to remember that inflation is a thing, and $600 in 2006 would be the equivalent of over $900 in today's money.
The PS5 Pro's price seems positively reasonable when set against the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which infamously launched at $699 – in 1993. Again, taking inflation into account, that would be the equivalent of $1,511 in 2024. Yikes. The 3DO Company quickly had to reduce the price to $399 to encourage sales, but even that is around $870 in modern cash (it would eventually be sold for as little as $199).
We're not for one moment saying that $699 is the right price for a console in 2024, but we've certainly had it worse – although it's worth noting that the 3DO flopped hard at $700 and was quickly reduced in price (yet still failed to sell in the desired numbers) while the PS3 had a slow start against the Xbox 360 partly because of its high cost; the price would come down to as low as $299, and it eventually sold an impressive 87.4 million units.
