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Sony announces PS5 Pro, a $700 graphics workhorse available Nov. 7
- mouse_ 2y agothis generation is so boring
- thatguy0900 2y agoHonestly crazy to me that people will pay 700 for a Playstation instead of 8-900 for a pc
- cassianoleal 2y agoI don't think you can get anywhere close to the performance of a PS5Pro with an 8-900 bucks PC. There's also the matter of the user experience, the fact that a lot of people have a large catalog of games on the PS platform. On the other hand, there's a lot of stuff that can be done on a PC that's just impossible on a console. On the one hand, the console is a bargain. On the other, not nearly as much. Apples, oranges.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- imbnwa 2y ago>There's also the matter of the user experience, the fact that a lot of people have a large catalog of games on the PS platform. Playnite is no match at all for the PS5 interface, which also handles streaming apps, which Playnite does not from what I can tell. I use both and know very well. The last place a user wants to deal with buggy behavior (bug right now in Playnite where I won't be able to use controller to move to the top bar in Playnite) or a manual touch to get things going the right way (Windows multi-display behavior is insanely bad, you need a Playnite plugin to fix it so things always launch on the TV and not the monitor, but you have to assign this for each new game) is entertainment center UX.
- Retric 2y agoPCs are a lot more hassle if you just want to chill and play games. Not such a big deal if you’re using the computer for other stuff, but a 2nd living room PC just never made sense to me.
- jurassicfoxy 2y agoExactly. Keyboard and mouse? Desk? Software updates? Heaven forbid: Windows? PS5 on the couch is by far the better experience.
- sbarre 2y agoI mean, Steam Big Picture is pretty much the same as a couch console experience.. A console is still a more streamlined experience, but you get 90% of the way there with Steam BP, plus you have a general purpose computer as well. But you spent more for the PC.. Different priorities for different people, for sure..
- aspeckt112 2y agoFor the general consumer, the target market of PlayStation, 90% of the way there isn't good enough. The cheaper option is 100% of the way there as far as they're concerned.
- sbarre 2y ago> For the general consumer, the target market of PlayStation, 90% of the way there isn't good enough. Oh come on, really? Big Picture is on par or arguably better than the PS4 interface was, and way better than previous generation consoles, and those all sold very well to the "general consumer"... I think you're just trying to argue for argument's sake here... I picked 90% as an arbitrary number, so you're literally arguing against a made up number.. My point to the GP was that gaming on PC doesn't have to be "Windows, keyboards and mice" and there's a perfectly good, and polished, store/couch/controller experience available to anyone who wants it, even if consoles are still incrementally better.
- bee_rider 2y agoFWIW it is pretty close to the PS4 pro cost at release, adjusting for inflation.
- Aissen 2y agoI don't think so. PS4 Pro launch price was $400 in 2016. It would be at $525 this year. But then, the PS5 Pro is dropping the blu-ray disc reader, so add in $80 more. $780 != $525
- bee_rider 2y agoI disagree with the idea of adjusting the price to account for a blu-ray reader, that’s just part of the change in expected functionality over time. But, I did misread the price, I stumbled across the Australia pricing somehow. And if we ask any Australian I’m sure they will tell us that paying Australian electronics prices is a nightmare. It is funny that the PS4 and the PS4 pro seem to have had very similar release prices. Although I vaguely remember that they might have had to drop the PS4 price pretty soon after release? It was a while ago, though…
- aeturnum 2y agoConsoles have always won on the "time investment :: game playing capability" metric. Sure, it's possible to be savvy with your time and money and build a PC that is better than a PS5 Pro for less money - but learning how to do that will take a lot of time and focus. If you already know how to do that it's a sunk cost and you probably already have a huge steam library anyway. On the flip side, if you can't build such a machine now, you never have to invest any time in learning by just buying a console. Your money will get you a little less (because of the "console tax") but it's available right now.
- pseudosavant 2y agoI highly doubt you can build a PC that performs better in games than the PS5 Pro for $700. That is a very low price when a $300 RTX 4060 will be a slower GPU than what the PS5 Pro will have. Not to mention that consoles generally are more efficient, and have better visuals at a given compute level, than running games in a general-purpose OS.
- JohnBooty 2y agoHere's what Sony says about the PS5 Pro: With PS5 Pro, we are upgrading to a GPU that has 67% more Compute Units than the current PS5 console and 28% faster memory. Overall, this enables up to 45% faster rendering for gameplay, making the experience much smoother. It's not clear to me that this will outperform a 4060. Based on some quick Googling, an RTX 4060 has about 50% more teraflops than a base PS5. Seems to me that this is more likely to bring the PS5 Pro up to par with an RTX 4060. Searching for "gaming PC" on Slickdeals and taking the first few non-laptop deals, I see: iBUYPOWER TraceMesh Gaming Desktop: i7-13700F, RTX 4060, 32GB DDR5, 1TB SSD $899 CyberPowerPC Desktop: i5 14400F, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD, RTX 4060 $850 Might be able to go a little lower with a DIY build, switching to AMD, etc. Anyway, the PCs are a little more pricy for sure, but they're also general purpose computers so... that's worth something...
- sjnonweb 2y agoA similar performing 4070ti alone will cost $750, and thats just gpu. Including cpu, memory, storage it will be more than $1500.
- throwaway17_17 2y agoWhere are you sourcing the comparison between the PS5 GPU and a 4070ti? The PS5 has 16 Gb of shared ram total and a 4070ti has 16 Gb for just the GPU. I don’t think the comparison is accurate and think that leads to an inflated value proposition in your comment. I have a PS5 and the percentage of games it can currently run at a solid 60 fps is a low percentage, but a 4070ti will consistently be at 60 fps for most cross platform games.
- Retric 2y ago> Where are you sourcing the comparison PS5 Pro has a much better GPU than the current PS5. It’s not fair to compare current HW with unreleased hardware, but at release PS5 Pro is going to be quite competitive for a little while.
- JohnBooty 2y agoSony says "up to 45% faster rendering" in the PS5 Pro so, I certainly think we can compare. That sets an upper bound for the performance increase we can expect, does it not? I certainly doubt they'd be underselling the perf gains. 45% faster rendering would get it up to about the performance of an RTX 4060 from what I'm seeing. If that's true, this is certainly a solid upgrade. I don't play a lot of AAA games but my RTX 4060 can do 1080p @ 60-144fps at mostly maxed settings. Whereas stock PS5 certainly seems to struggle to hit that. (If I understand correctly, I could use the magic upscaling crap to get similar results at 4K but haven't had the inclination to mess with it)
- Retric 2y agoThey also say with individual rays calculated at "double or even triple the speeds of PlayStation 5. “67 percent more compute units and 28 percent faster video RAM” and the images are with a PS5 @ 30FPS and a PS5 Pro at 60FPS. So, it’s a different architecture not just a speed bump. That said, I agree in general it’s going to be worse than a 4070ti but every architecture has its quirks.
- ciroduran 2y agoYou can get the best Steam Deck for a similar price
- resource_waste 2y agoI think I spent $800 for a Asus with a 3060 last year. Thats 6gb vram, enough to do AI Art and local LLMs. And run every video game. It comes with a screen, keyboard, and semi-functional OS(Win 11), but you can always install Fedora on it. The PS5? The article didn't list the vram. It has some video games, unlike a general purpose laptop that has every computer. If you get access to LLMs or AI art, it is at Sony's will and I doubt they are paying the CUDA premium. I think this is an education thing. Some low-information person just wants a gaming machine. They don't compare, they just go with something trustworthy where they can play fifa with their high school friends. I have a hard time thinking this is anything other than a failure in information. A more informed person would never this.
- darknavi 2y agoWas hoping for more backwards compatibility with older generations.
- bilekas 2y agoHow were you expecting a new pro model to achieve that? The backwards compatibility library is being expanded but it's certainly not going to be a hardware bottleneck. The only hardware outcastnis the PS3 architecture and Sony will never touch that hardware ever again.
- sergiotapia 2y agoall of my games are discs when it comes to consoles. i will be forced to skip this, even ignoring the ludicrous price.
- fsflover 2y agoDupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41501580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41501580
- roody15 2y agoNo disc drive... lame. pass.
- sjnonweb 2y agoDisc drive can be attached
- bqmjjx0kac 2y agoWhen I was growing up, I never imagined the dongle future we live in.
- poloniculmov 2y agoDid you forget about the 32x and the Mega CD? We're back in the golden age of the Sega Genesis.
- Narishma 2y agoThe Atari Jaguar also had a CD add-on.
- jl6 2y agoInteresting that Sony considers a Blu-Ray drive to no longer be a key feature of the flagship console model. They’re probably not wrong, given the long slow decline in importance of optical media. Feels like the beginning of the end when even Blu-Ray’s primary creator is walking away.
- marricks 2y agoSony & MS aided in the decline of discs by making a disc drive an expensive add on and having every game need an online connection or day one update to fix bugs. I'm sure they had a marketing plan of making $90 bucks off a $10 buck disc drive and then go "oh wow, look, only 30% of people spent an extra $100 bucks!"
- dvdbloc 2y agoIt also enables them to effectively kill the used game market when you have to buy all games new through their store (or a code). You can’t even share a game with a friend, unless you share their whole account, which is way more friction.
- marricks 2y agoYep, then they can offer "share with a friend for a week just 5 bucks" at some point and we can all act like it's some revelatory experience :(
- rtkwe 2y agoThey were also following consumer trends, digital purchases were already getting very popular before they introduced diskless versions of the consoles.
- echelon 2y agoThey have sales data and probably analytics on actual usage. Even if the numbers aren't diminutive, they're likely looking to cut retail out of their margins. I like physical media. A loud subset of gamers like physical media. But when you compare against Steam, it's clear what actually sells.
- physicsguy 2y agoThe pricing is totally wrong on this no matter the specs. £700 in the U.K. is crazy
- alias_neo 2y agoI have a PS5 Disc edition and play mostly physical games, so we're looking at what, at least £800 with a disc drive add-on? Insanity.
- physicsguy 2y agoI just don’t really get the target… If you’ve not bought a PS5 yet, I think at the price it’s not attractive. If you have one, the next gen games aren’t pushing at the limits of the current hardware yet.
- alias_neo 2y agoWhat I've noticed, and Sony confirmed in their video with Mark Cerny, is that everyone (75%) of people are playing on performance mode, because in Fidelity mode, none of the games are capable of holding 60fps. The Pro supposedly provides Fidelity mode graphics (or near to) at 60fps. It's really noticeable too, you either lose the nice visual definition with low dynamic scaling resolutions, and RT, by playing in Performance, or you get horrible frame rates and lots of input lag in Fidelity, but you get RT and nicer visuals. If I gamed a lot (I don't much at since I have young kids, due to time constraints), and the price was a bit lower, I'd totally get one, but it's not for me, right now. So I do understand who it's for; put that price tag stings a little. EDIT: One big annoyance is that if you have a day-1 PS5 like I do, you likely wouldn't have bought the slim version, and if you want a disc drive, you'll have to buy that separate; There's not many people likely to have bought a slim with a drive to have it to swap onto the Pro, in my mind.
- physicsguy 2y agoI've got a Series X, and I also play on performance mode, but to be totally honest, I've got a 42" TV and I honestly can't tell the difference.
- greenthrow 2y agoAnyone bemoaning the loss of the disc drive hasn't used a recent gen console with a disc drive. If you buy a game on disc you still have to install it to the internal storage because the disc drive is incredibly slow. But you also have the downside of having to swap the disc when you want to change games. It's completely pointless unless you have super slow internet speeds.
- jahnu 2y agoYou can resell the disc.
- greenthrow 2y agoI don't care about that vs the super slow install time and having to swap the disc to switch games. My time is worth more than $30. That's barely 2 fast food meals anymore.
- slothtrop 2y agoIt's useful in one way: used game purchases, re-selling, and trading with friends. Digital console purchases go on sale too but not (often) for the prices you'll sometimes see on Steam, Gamestop and elsewhere. You can't resell for a few bucks and lend to a friend. There are sometimes features to "play together" but that's it. In a market of $60-90 new games that makes a big difference. Since consoles are glorified locked-down PCs at this point, and because server-side support eventually ends (which renders units useless for anything that isn't already installed), the market appeal may diminish in the face of an increasingly flexible PC market which has (basically) limitless backwards compatibility. Hardcore gamers this past decade have repurchased some titles multiple times, with PC usually being the last one. I expect Nintendo will take less of a hit from that than Sony/MSFT, though MSFT has its gamepass and leverages overreliance on Windows. Sony is in a spot. There was speculation that it would style itself as the boutique/high-quality option. I don't think that would be enough, in the end consoles are both more affordable and approachable for average consumers, that is where most of the appeal lies.
- tpl 2y agoI use mine all the time to watch movies.
- ado__dev 2y agoThe price point is a huge miss for me. I'll stick to the original PS5 for the time being.
- faefox 2y agoConsoles are pricing themselves out of relevance when you can buy a Steam Deck and have access to a vast library of (frequently heavily-discounted!) content for $399.
- alephnerd 2y agoNot all content owned by Sony or Microsoft ends up on Steam. This is where consoles remain relevant.
- talldayo 2y agoPretty much the sole game worth buying a Sony console for (Bloodborne) is playable from end-to-end with PC emulation, even on Steam Deck: https://youtu.be/ItnC4GnHfa0 https://youtu.be/ItnC4GnHfa0 Especially for Sony, there simply aren't any worthwhile exclusive titles they're putting out. The good/big releases get published on PC now, and the obscure/fandom related stuff like Persona and Senran Kagura bled out of Sony platforms almost immediately. That leaves a small handful of games that can mostly be emulated on PC platforms. Unless your name is "Nintendo", you do not have the publishing power to make a console attractive to wealthy PC owners. Sony literally does not have titles with the same draw, anymore.
- vmladenov 2y agoLots of games still come out broken on PC to the point where it’s a worse experience, like UE4 games having shader compilation stutter.
- talldayo 2y agoThat's true, but also fixable. On Steam Deck it doesn't even occur, because you precompile all shaders during the DXVK translation process. It's really a DirectX problem, for the most part.
- a96 2y agoSony pretty much lived on two titles IIRC: Final Fantasy and Gran Turismo.
- m3kw9 2y agoThe heck they charge almost double for a few more FPS?
- diggan 2y agoFramerate seems about double or triple (from 30fps to 60/120fps), it has a new dedicated chip for AI upscaling and seemingly also adds more ray tracing capabilities. Personally, won't make me pay double for a PS5, but I'm sure more than a few people care about these things.
- Narishma 2y agoThey also have double the storage among other things.
- m3kw9 2y agoI mean there isn’t really a truely next gen game yet, until GTA6 comes out maybe you may want this. All the games before it are more like upscaled ps4 games.
- cloudrkt 2y agoI bet it will sell like hotcakes with GTA6 coming out
- antics9 2y agoWhat's the point of owning a gaming console? You don´t really own the games anyway; as in being able to hand them over to a friend or sell them on a second market. Why not just stream the gameplay through big mainframes like Nvidia GaForce Now and the likes?
- jamespo 2y agoYou can sell the discs? Admittedly the drive for this is an add on.
- a96 2y agoYou can also loan, borrow, trade.. And you end up owning the media even when (not if) a network service is down. Even when the service is completely discontinued.
- diggan 2y ago> What's the point of owning a gaming console? Plug-and-play entertainment. I thought this was kind of well known at this point? > You don´t really own the games anyway; as in being able to hand them over to a friend or sell them on a second market. Isn't the same for most PC players who purchase games via Steam and Epic Store? You don't "own" those either. Most consoles at least has optional discs you could gift/sell on second hand market. > Why not just stream the gameplay through big mainframes like Nvidia GaForce Now and the likes? Not everyone lives in places where there is 10ms latency to the closest data center. Streaming only works OK when bandwidth is high and latency is low, which is probably less common than you think.
- edu 2y agoBut with the time to update game, it’s often plug-wait-and-play. In this sense streaming games services are more plug and play, given what you say that you live in an area with good connectivity.
- TiredOfLife 2y ago> Not everyone lives in places where there is 10ms latency to the closest data center. Streaming only works OK when bandwidth is high and latency is low, which is probably less common than you think. You don't need 10ms anything below 40 is good. I get 20ms being 500km from datacenter.
- ChrisArchitect 2y ago[dupe] Discussion on official announcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41501580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41501580
- gxd 2y agoCool! I'd like to see now an even smaller PS5 - preferably as small as the XBOX S. I find the PS5 Slim still somewhat bulky, although it's no longer a major problem like the original.
- zelifcam 2y agoWhen can we stop pretending consoles are not computers and make things a tad easier on developers and consumers?
- rtkwe 2y agoWhat does that look like to you?