5 PS5 Pro rumors

Now that the PlayStation 5 is well into its lifecycle, Sony is all but confirmed to be planning another half-step “Pro” console like the PS4 Pro. It should deliver some degree of performance boost to PS5 games, but rumors are still a little scattershot otherwise. We’re not quite sure how powerful it will be, what it will look like, and whether it might launch alongside any new or upgraded games.

With that in mind, here’s a list of some of the most promising PS5 Pro rumors — not necessarily in the sense of how likely they are to come true, but in what I’d most want to see in a finished console. In fact, some of these rumors may conflict with others — even if they don’t, details could change radically by the time the Pro is in stores. Ultimately, this is a wishlist as much as anything.

1 A massive jump in power

Insomniac

While the PS5 was considered a leap forward for consoles when it launched towards the end of 2020, technology is always advancing quickly, and the system has sometimes struggled to deliver smooth framerates. Its current performance is rated at about 10.28 teraflops. A rumor from Moore’s Law is Dead — later corroborated by other sources — claims that the PS5 Pro will have 33.5 teraflops. That’s comparable with better gaming PCs and could provide seriously improved framerates for existing PS5 titles. We’ll just have to wait and see how big the jump is in practice.

Don’t expect any games to require the Pro. Instead, on top of enhancing overall graphics for those ready to pay, Sony’s interests may be in delivering 8K resolution and/or ray-traced lighting. The stock PS5 can technically handle those features, but often with a serious hit, which means they’re usually avoided. Sony sells 8K Bravia TVs, so it has an obvious incentive to build a console that justifies those sets’ high pricetags. We’re unlikely to see many new 8K games until the PS6 era, both because of the cost of 8K TVs and the size of the PS5 Pro userbase, which probably won’t be worth developing 8K art assets when 4K is amazing enough.

2 A bundled Astro Bot game

The Astro Bot series has garnered a decent fanbase. Aside from it offering us solid platforming, the second game — Astro’s Playroom — has come pre-installed on every PS5, giving it a lot more exposure than the original PSVR title. In podcasts, Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb has claimed that a new Astro Bot game could ship sometime in 2024, and bundling it with the PS5 Pro would be a natural way to improve the console’s appeal. If nothing else, it would be nice to see a new Astro Bot take advantage of the Pro’s power, perhaps using ray tracing as much as possible when a Quality graphics setting is active. There should be plenty of glass and metal to bounce reflections off, given a sci-fi theme.

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3 Hardware-accelerated upscaling

Sony Interactive Entertainment

One of the ways Sony might get to 8K is new upscaling technology similar to Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR, according to The Verge. In this case the tech is said to be called PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR), powered by custom Sony processor architecture. With PSSR active, games should be able to hit 4K or 8K resolutions without the performance drop created by native rendering. There could be some lag, possibly on the order of 2ms when scaling from 1080p to 4K. That’s likely negligible unless you’re a professional e-sports player seeking every possible edge.

PSSR could be essential to how Sony plans to sell the Pro. While the console should be legitimately more powerful without any upscaling, reducing the burden of higher resolutions would go a long way toward making the upgrade seem dramatic. It’s why a lot of PC games are playable on the Valve Steam Deck despite its compact form factor.

4 A redesigned shell

Sony

There aren’t any solid rumors for this one, but it’s safe to say the PS5 Pro will look a little different from its predecessors, at least sporting some new badging for identification and promotion purposes. I’d like it if Sony went further, since while I’m one of the people who genuinely enjoys the PS5’s curves, it’s always interesting to see a company experiment with aesthetics when it can.

More meaningful reasons for change might include a better fit in entertainment centers — those curves can create problems — or simply signaling that the Pro is a meaningful revision instead of a quick spinoff to revive flattening sales figures. It’s why companies like Apple and Google periodically overhaul their design philosophies. Would you be as motivated to buy an iPhone 16 if it looked just like your iPhone 12?

5 A September release date

This one is highly unlikely, since sources like The Verge are now pointing to a “holiday” release window, which typically means November or December in order to snag Christmas shoppers. Earlier rumors did point to September, however, and of course no one would object to an early launch unless the console was half-baked. It may be a matter of building up inventory — Sony needs to satisfy both launch-day buyers and the Christmas crowd, hopefully avoiding the chronic shortages that plagued the PS5 until recently. The company may have no choice but to hold out until November if it wants factories to churn out enough units. For any company, there are few things worse than spending millions of dollars advertising a product people can’t actually buy.

Keep in mind that there’s a chance Sony will miss 2024 entirely. Hardware delays happen, whether because of production bottlenecks or unexpected technical obstacles. There’s even the possibility that if it plans to bundle a game, delays on that end could cause trouble, though Sony might be willing to sacrifice that bundle to reap Christmas sales.

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FAQ

Q: Why is Sony making a PS5 Pro?

We don’t know for sure. PS5 sales have slowed in the past year, though, and at a base level, Sony may think it can attract more money from hardcore gamers willing to upgrade. The console is starting to show its age, since it can’t handle ray tracing that well. Most PS5 games also lack any sort of support for 8K resolution, which might be an issue for Sony executives given that it sells a range of 8K TVs.

There’s also competition with Microsoft. While the PS5 is trouncing the Xbox Series X in sales, the X is still a very capable console, and Microsoft is rumored to be working on its own hardware upgrade.