[If] The PS5 Pro is Struggling, Where Do We Go?

The PS5 Pro went on sale this week. If you didn’t know, you won’t be alone. I’ve seen no advertising, no sprawl of articles convincing me to overcome my skepticism and lay down the best part of £1,000 on a console, a stand and a disc drive.

It’s the most muted console release I’ve ever seen. And as naturally happens on the internet, I’ve been told it’s either a sign that it’s overperforming or underperforming.

On the one hand, it’s readily available. This is true. It’s everywhere. Online and physical stores have loads of them available. I’ve seen stories of stores not shifting a single one.

On the other, Sony’s Hiroki Totoki told Nikkei Asia that “”I’m under the impression that the product is performing slightly stronger than the pre-orders of the PS4 Pro during the same period”. It’s not the surest of statements, but if you want to take it at face value I don’t blame you.

We’re in the early days, and I’m sure we’ll start to get the full picture in the coming days and weeks. From an in-a-bubble standpoint, it doesn’t matter if the PS5 is a roaring success or not. I’m sure they’re not losing money on each unit, and I’m sure Sony knew well in advance that this was a niche product. The PS4 Pro was a niche product, and it had the massive advantage of coming out as a new TV standard was taking off. If you bought a TV at any time after the PS4 was released, there was a good chance it was a 4K TV. That wasn’t something the PS4 took advantage of at all.

This console doesn’t need to be a massive seller. Thankfully. But it is an interesting case study for what comes next.

PS5 Pro and the Future

We’ve been through all this before. The cost of parts isn’t coming down at the rate it used to. It’s why we haven’t had an real discounts on consoles this generation. On top of parts being more expensive, the upgrades they bring are less impressive than ever. If you’re really into visuals and you want to Digital Foundry every frame, you’ll spot the difference. Many people won’t. Many wouldn’t want to.

What the PlayStation 6 (and next Xbox) must offer is a noticeable leap above the PS5, and a good leap above the PS5 Pro. That doesn’t mean 20% more pixels in an AI upscaled image. Nor does it mean raytraced shadows that look pretty much like regular shadows, just at a massive jump in effort on performance.

And for that to happen, either Sony and Microsoft need to take a big hit to get it down to “console prices” (whatever that means these days), or the RRP for both is going to be high. Eye-wateringly, “why aren’t I buying a PC” high.

Most of the attention a new console gets comes from marketing, and the PS5 Pro has been lacking in that area. Sony doesn’t expect or even want to sell 50m of these things.  But as an experimental stopgap between generations, it tells us something interesting. Look at the reaction: to the price, to the performance improvements. It’s too much of one and not enough of the other.

Which makes the question of how we overcome this problem in the next mainline consoles a very difficult one indeed.