PS4 Pro was revealed at Sony’s press conference Wednesday afternoon, giving an official name to what has been known as PlayStation Neo for quite some time. The PS4 Pro will launch on November 10, 2016 and will cost $399 USD, and a number of upcoming releases will be prepped to utilize the systems new capabilities.
The PS4 Pro is a step ahead for Sony, capitalizing on technology that will get the most out of 4k and HDR visuals. The system itself is upgraded to include a 1TB hard drive, double the GPU power, a boost to CPU clockspeed, and utilizes technology adopted from AMD Polaris graphical architecture. During the press conference, Andrew House, President and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment stated “Our goal is to deliver high-fidelity graphical experiences.” and “We aim to provide developers with tools to further their visions.” The system itself is not just for those with 4K tvs, but for those that also have standard HDTVs, as the system and developers are able to add some extra fidelity to games and optimize them for a standard HDTV set. They proceeded to show off what some of the games would look like utilizing the boost in power and the 4K and HDR visual buffs.
A number of games were shown off during the presentation, and some of them seemed like they had some minor improvements, a few of them were indeed quite stunning in their presentation. Insomniac and Marvel’s Spider-Man was easily one of the more visually stunning demos shown, with New York City shown on a grand scale, and the ability to see individual people on the street for blocks and blocks in the distance. EPIC Games’ Paragon was also shown off, and demonstrated a noticeable burst in color and detail in the game thanks to the PS4 Pro’s power, while also sneaking in a tease of a new character that has yet to be unveiled. Last of the standouts was an entirely new demo of Mass Effect Andromeda, showing the hero exploring an alien cave, and showing off more of the cast than has previously been shown by Bioware.
Sony made it known that the PS4 Pro was made to stand beside the standard PS4, and the decision for the title PS4 Pro was to show that the system was geared towards the higher-end gamer, but that it is still in the PS4 family and not an entirely new system. The PS4 Slim was also shown and revealed to be the standard model available in stores as of Sept 15, 2016, for a much lower price of $299 USD. Between the PS4 Pro, the PS4 Slim and PS VR, it looks like Sony has quite a firm hold on their lead in this generations console race, so it will be interesting to see how the PS4 Pro stacks up to Microsoft’s Scorpio when it launches next year.
Source: PlayStation Meeting (via Gamespot)