With PS5 Pro leaks emerging from various sources over the last few weeks, it seems like we’ve all now got a pretty good picture of what Sony’s mid-gen refresh will offer. However, it sounds as if the PS5 Pro specs have underwhelmed developers, with a reputable games industry journalist claiming that he “didn’t meet a single person that understood the point of it” while at GDC.
According to the leaks, the PS5 Pro looks set to make improvements to visuals and audio for some of the best PS5 games, but it appears to lack any major new innovations that could really push the capabilities of games forwards. For example, the tech gurus at Digital Foundry recently claimed the console’s extra power wouldn’t be enough to guarantee that this generation’s biggest upcoming game, GTA 6, would be able to run at 60fps. The standard PS5 remains one of the best games consoles ever, and while the Pro will undoubtedly be better and will improve the performance of many games, it looks like it won’t be a radical upgrade.
This has seemingly left developers a bit disappointed. After returning from this year’s GDC in San Francisco, the head of GamesIndustry.biz, Chris Dring, has lifted the lid on conversations he had with studios about the PS5 Pro and its impact on both old and new PS5 games.
“I didn’t meet a single person that understood the point of it – obviously PlayStation 5 fans will upgrade, they understand that, it benefits Sony, [but] developers didn’t seem to feel they needed it,” Dring says on the GI Microcast. He adds that a lot of developers feel like they “weren’t making the most of the [standard] PS5 in the first place”.
Dring also says that “a couple of companies” he spoke to aren’t convinced that the PS5 Pro will have much of an effect on growing the market and that the console “isn’t going to move the needle”.
Without a doubt, the PS5 Pro is certainly going to help lots of games run and look better than on the standard console. Plus, its rumored Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling feature is also going to take older 1080p games and pull them up to 4K, which will make these titles shine in a new light. However, the consensus certainly seems to be that this console will only really be of interest to Sony superfans who always want the most recent tech, or those that highly value squeezing every last drop of performance out of a game.
We were also in San Francisco and learned some interesting PS5 news ourselves – the developer of Genshin Impact rival Wuthering Waves confirmed to us its plans to bring the game to console, although it might not arrive on the game’s full release date. Plus, we spoke to the team behind upcoming extraction shooter Exoborne about how it can stand out in a genre that’s becoming increasingly-crowded.