The PlayStation 5 Pro could well be announced within a month, according to the latest reports.
Veteran games journalist Jeff Grubb said the PlayStation 5 Pro is likely to be announced before the end of September.
“The last I heard, this thing is still coming out this year. More recently, what I've heard is there is probably going to be a State of Play, not a Showcase, by the end of September,” Grubb said on the Game Mess Mornings show, which is part of the Giant Bomb family.
This would mean the PlayStation 5 Pro will launch roughly four years after the original PlayStation 5. While it may seem like the PS5 is only really getting started, this four-year gap is actually wider than the 3-year gap between the PS4 (2013) and PS4 Pro (2016).
According to a report by wccftech, the console was an “open secret” at the Gamescom show, which took place in Cologne between August 21 and 25.
“Without even being prodded by me at all, a developer that I won't name openly said they had received the specs of the PS5 Pro and were confident that Unreal Engine 5 would run much better on the new hardware compared to the regular PlayStation 5,” the site claims.
PlayStation 5 Pro features
How much better will the PlayStation 5 Pro be? Mirroring the advancements seen in PC graphics cards, the new console will have dramatically better ray tracing and upscaling.
For those not mired in graphics tech, ray tracing models the behaviour of light, for much-improved reflections, shadows and other lighting effects. It’s a power-hungry technique, but bespoke graphics hardware made for the job is likely to be a key part of the PlayStation 5 Pro upgrade.
We also heard about the PlayStation 5 Pro’s PSSR technology way back in March 2024. PSSR stands for PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution, and will be used to make games appear sharper and more detailed without using much additional graphical power. It should also be able to all-but eliminate “jaggies”, to add a smoother look to all that additional upscaled sharpness.
The bad news is the PlayStation 5 Pro is not going to be cheap. Grubb and others estimate it will cost somewhere between $600 and $700, and likely not far off those figures in pounds, considering the pricing of today’s PlayStation 5 consoles.
Sony’s PlayStation 5 Slim with disc drive costs £479.99 in the UK and $499.99 in the US, for reference.
This console generation simply hasn’t seen the kind of price erosion of the previous generations, and the cost of the PS5 actually rose by £30 in the UK in 2022. We’re luckier than the folks over in Japan, though, who just saw another price hike of up to 13,000 yen, equivalent to almost £70, in recent days.
