Reports suggest Sony is working on a mid-cycle upgrade on the popular PS5 console, which will likely be called the PS5 Pro. Sony hasn’t confirmed this just yet, but it’s possible that we may see it arrive by the end of 2024.
We’ve been searching the web for the most credible rumours and leaks on the PlayStation 5 Pro in order to create this guide on the potential console. We’ll be updating this article as soon as we hear more, so make sure to bookmark this page for future developments, as well as our take on the PS5 Pro.
Release date
The PS5 could launch in the latter end of 2024, according to a report from Insider Gaming.
That seems like a plausible launch window to us, but there are many other websites with contradicting claims.
YouTube channel Moore’s Law is Dead suggests that the PS5 Pro could arrive sometime in 2023. The channel’s founder said, “There is a PlayStation 5 Pro coming in a similar timeframe to when one came out after the original PS4 launch.”
We reckon an announcement from Sony would need to be pretty soon if that’s to be accurate, but we certainly wouldn’t rule it out.
A leaked TCL presentation (via ppe.pl) also indicates that a PS5 Pro will launch in 2023 or 2024, although it’s hard to know whether this is just speculation or insider knowledge.
There’s yet to be any reliable or credible information detailing the release date of the PS5, so take all of those rumours with a pinch of salt. But all signs point towards a mid-cycle PS5 refresh arriving before the end of 2024.
Price
The price of the PS5 Pro is not clear, although Moore’s Law is Dead has suggested that it could be priced as high as $700, depending on how hard they push the new hardware.
However, it’s possible that the PS5 Pro may have a more reasonable price of £450/$490, adopting the same price point as the vanilla PS5. Since the PS4 Pro launched with the same £349.99/$399.99 price point as the base PS4, it would make sense for Sony to stick to the same tactics.
Until we know more about the pricing for the PS5 Pro, we recommend that you take these rumours with a healthy dose of scepticism, as Sony may have a completely different plan in mind.
Design
When the PS5 originally launched back in 2020, one of the major talking points around the console was its striking design. Unlike the PS4, it can be configured to lay on its side or stand up, with a new black and white colour combination.
There have been few rumours about the design of the PS5 Pro, but if the PS4 Pro is anything to go by, we can assume that it will be larger than the original PS5 to fit in any upgraded internals and features.
Various reports have suggested that Sony may opt for a detachable disk drive for future iterations of the PS5, ensuring that the console has a slim design, while still being able to play physical games. It’s unclear whether Sony will also adopt this tactic for the PS5 Pro, but it would make a lot of sense in our eyes.
If the PS5 Pro uses an even more powerful chip, Sony may need to increase the size of its cooling solution. That said, the fans currently do a very good job of keeping the PS5 cool right now.
Specs
The specs of the PS5 Pro are a little hard to predict, but we can expect that it will be more powerful than its predecessor. The PS5 can run supported games in 4K with a 120Hz refresh rate with features like ray tracing also present.
The next logical upgrade could well be improved performance to hit 8K resolution for AAA games. But since 8K monitors and TVs are already pretty inaccessible to most users, it’s unlikely that this will be a major focus. The compromise could be that the PS5 Pro maintains a 4K performance, but with more headroom to allow for a higher refresh rate with ray tracing activated.
A job listing for AMD posted in May 2022 suggested that the company is currently working on an RDNA chipset for consoles. While there is no definitive evidence that this will be used with the PS5 Pro, it could back up the idea that the latest Sony console would get a sizable chip upgrade that could provide more power.
We also caught wind of a patent filed by Sony’s Mark Cerny which mentions that the latest console may upgrade its ray tracing performance. This patent looks to be adapting the current hardware within the PS5, but since the vanilla console is unlikely to see any hardware changes three years after its release, it could end up playing a role in the PS5 Pro.
It’s possible that Sony could take advantage of AMD’s latest Radeon RX 7000 GPU architecture, as well as the newest Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 Series CPUs. But this is just idle speculation at the moment, with no big hints from either company that they will be teaming up with Sony.
We’ve already seen AMD utilise it’s latest CPU architecture for devices like the Asus ROG Ally, but any chip designed for the PS5 Pro would be substantially more powerful since it will be housed inside a home console instead of a portable.
We would also like to see a storage upgrade for the PS5 Pro since the base model comes with a measly 825GB SSD. It would be great to see a 2TB model, with 1TB quickly becoming too little to hold a large library of modern games. The Spider-Man Miles Morales Ultimate Edition takes up a whopping 170.5GB alone.
If you want to know even more about the PS5 Pro then make sure you bookmark this page and come back soon, as we will be sure to update this article once we learn more about the latest console.
The Trusted Take
I think it’s the right time for Sony to launch a PS5 Pro. There’s finally enough stock for the PS5 to be available in most retailers, so a mid-cycle upgrade would no longer feel like a slap in the face for those yet to upgrade to the latest generation.
I’ve also started to notice the limitations of the standard PS5, especially when ray tracing is activated. I really don’t like being forced to choose between a high frame rate and high fidelity – the main appeal of consoles is that you don’t have to worry about fiddling with performance settings like you do with a PC.
A PS5 Pro would go a long way to solving that issue, and Sony likely has access to the required hardware now AMD has launched its latest CPUs and GPUs. It sounds like we may have to wait until 2024 for the upgrade, but I’ll certainly be right at the front of the queue when Sony finally does launch it.
