A leak that hit the 'net earlier this week seemingly revealed the existence and specifications of the PlayStation 5 Pro – a mid-generation, upgraded version of the PS5. And now it seems that the details have been corroborated by a much-respected journalist and games industry expert.
Giant Bomb's Jeff Grubb has said that the leak is "almost certainly real based on what I've heard" and that he is throwing his "confirm, confirm, confirm into the ring".
The original information is thought to be based on dev kits that have allegedly been sent to studios. Among other specs, the leaker stated that the PS5 Pro will have dedicated ray-tracing hardware to make it less intensive to implement in games, although it would stick to AMD Zen2 processing in order to maintain compatibility with the existing PS5 catalogue.
It will run at higher frequencies, however, and be more capable at rendering (upscaled) 4K at a stable 30fps.
This has been corroborated by Grubb, who claims that the upgraded machine will utilise a proprietary DLSS-style solution.
Nvidia's Deep Learning Super Sampling technology uses AI and machine learning to upscale the resolution and add frames without impacting processes. This allows games to run with improved image quality and frames rate but still remain within an achievable processing budget.
The end result is much better looking games.
"That’s where like the two times hardware ray tracing acceleration comes into place, but they would be able to do even more than just better hardware ray tracing. So yeah, this thing is probably happening," said Grubb (via VGC).
He also suggested that the PS5 Pro is "probably" to be released in September 2024, as previously suggested.
We have already seen the launch of a couple of new PlayStation 5 models this year, which reduce the size and width of the original console(s). The new slimmer machines can be bought with or without a detachable 4K Blu-ray disc drive, which can also be added later as an optional extra.