Size comparison
This past week, Sony announced a mildly confusing new offering, a new PS5 to eventually replace the current one. You can buy a disc-based one for the same price, or you can buy a digital one, now $50 more expensive, and add a sold-separately disc drive later. So, the console got slimmer but the price went up.
The PS5 Slim has been reported on by Tom Henderson’s Insider-Gaming for a long while now, as they always maintained that their sources had indicated it was very real. And sure enough, here we are. And it is probably time to revisit Insider-Gaming’s other reporting on a not-announced PS5 Pro. But if the Slim existed, and those same sources are saying the Pro exists, well, you get where we are probably headed.
The original article was from back in March of 2023, confirming that the PS5 Pro was in fact in development. And the targeted release was going to be the holiday window of 2024.
Past that, there isn’t a ton of actual information in the report, but later, separate info from Key to Gaming, talked about higher FPS stability targets, an 8K performance mode and accelerated ray tracing. Not shocking for an attempt at an upgrade like this.
The question now, however, is not really whether the PS5 Pro is real, but A) what it will cost and B) if it’s even really necessary this console generation.
A Sony Playstation 4 Pro with gaming console seen during a PS4 Pro premiere event in … [+] Berlin, Germany, 08 November 2016. The teams from Sony Interactive Entertainment Deutschland, Sony Electronics, and ToLL Relations presented the new hardware in Berlin. (Photo by Rainer Jensen/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The PS4 Pro arrived at $400, the same prices the PS4 itself launched at. But here Sony is showing that prices are going up not down, with this slim model, so it seems unlikely this would be $400 again. Plus, $400 in 2013 is now $524.50 today, inflation and all.
Give the announced pricing of the Slim, I don’t imagine that it will go for any less than $500 at launch. $600 seems like a bridge too far, and Sony is allergic to pricing anything that high since the PS3 launch. $550 is possible, but that would be $50 over the Series X, which I don’t think they want. Microsoft has not talked about any kind of power upgrade this gen, but they too will have a redesigned console coming out soon, according to leaks from the FTC leaks.
Does the market need a PS5 Pro? We were already about two years delayed in a lot of people getting the base unit thanks to mass shortages. The Pro would already be delayed a year past when the PS4 Pro came out relative to the original. But if this ends up being a long console generation, maybe not ending until 2027 or 2028, yeah, it probably seems like it will make sense eventually, even many players aren’t beating down the doors for one right at launch.
Follow me on Twitter, Threads, YouTube, and Instagram.
Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
