Three years after the PlayStation 4 launched, Sony announced the PS4 Pro, an incremental upgrade for the console that would increase its technical capabilities (and its size to boot).
Some games then carried the label of being “PS4 Pro enhanced”, meaning that they offered extra features if you played them on a PS4 Pro. Usually, those features amounted to higher frame rates or increased graphical fidelity.
Naturally, the PS4 Pro offered a superior experience to the original PS4 (and it helped that the Pro offered extra storage space as well), and now, many are questioning whether a PS5 Pro could be in the works.
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This would seem like the ideal time for Sony to announce such a machine, so let’s take a look at some of the points to consider regarding the arrival of a potential PS5 Pro before the PS6.
Rumours have begun to swirl about the PS5 Pro
For a long time now, rumours have been swirling regarding the possibility that a PS5 Pro could be in the works, but recently, the biggest (and, arguably, most credible) rumour yet emerged.
According to French gaming platform Dealabs, a PS5 Pro is indeed in production at Sony. As you might expect, it will be called the PS5 Pro, which would make sense given Sony’s strategy with the PS4 Pro.
The site even provided a sketch of what the PS5 Pro will look like. The sketch, as IGN says, is based on what Dealabs claims to be “the final packaging box of the new console”.
Whether or not this sketch is legitimate remains to be seen, of course, but Dealabs is historically a relatively reliable leaker of information, so it might be safe to start getting excited.
When will the PS5 Pro be announced?
According to the aforementioned Dealabs article, the PS5 Pro is expected to be announced sometime during the first half of September 2024.
That would track with Sony’s previous announcement of the PS4 Pro, which landed in early September 2016 with a view to the console launching in November.
The difference, of course, is that Sony briefly discussed a new iteration of the PS4 during that year’s E3 presentation, while this year, no such mention of a new PS5 version has appeared.
Then again, E3 as an entity no longer exists, and so off-the-cuff remarks or improvised tidbits don’t really tend to happen as much in the gaming landscape any more. If you ask us, that’s a shame.
When will the PS5 Pro launch?
Again, this is assuming that Dealabs’ information is correct, but proceeding on the assumption that it is, we’d expect the PS5 Pro to arrive around November.
We can’t guess at a specific release date yet, but it’ll likely be within the first couple of weeks of the month; the PS4 Pro launched in early-to-mid November, after all.
This gives Sony a chance to address potential short-term supply issues before Christmas if necessary, and it also gives consumers a chance to buy their consoles before the holiday season truly begins.
It’s obviously not clear whether or not this will actually happen, but we’d place our bets on the PS5 Pro coming out in November this year.
Will the PS5 Pro arrive before the PS6?
Obviously, if the PS5 Pro does get released in November, then it will come out before any potential PlayStation 6 console is announced, yes.
If the PS5 Pro doesn’t come out before the PS6, then there will almost certainly be no PS5 Pro. After all, it doesn’t really benefit Sony to release a slightly more powerful PS5 when the PS6 already exists as a major upgrade.
Things change a little if we’re considering an even slimmer and higher-capacity PS5; such a console could conceivably arrive around the same time of the PS6, giving consumers a choice between last-gen budget and current-gen power.
However, if the PS5 Pro is indeed real, then we can definitely expect it to arrive sometime before the PlayStation 6. You can rest easy that your purchase won’t be in vain.
What will the PS5 Pro look like?
According to Dealabs’ sketch, the PS5 Pro looks…well, rather a lot like the existing PS5, as it happens, albeit with a few extra bells and whistles bolted on.
As pointed out by IGN, the sketch shows a design that resembles the PS5 Slim quite strongly, albeit with extra black stripes in the centre of the console (which may just be to denote that it’s the Pro variant).
The Slim also has two USB-C ports on the front as opposed to the PS5’s one, which should make connecting peripherals a little easier.
IGN also notes that the Dealabs sketch seems to suggest the PS5 Pro is thicker than the PS5 Slim, which means you might have some trouble fitting it into your gaming space (that’s right, we’re going down this road again).
What will the PS5 Pro’s specs be?
In March, what appeared to be specs for the PS5 Pro were leaked online. IGN subsequently reported on these leaks and understood them to be accurate, so we can take this information with a degree of trust.
Supposedly, the Pro will offer around 16-17 teraflops of real-time power as compared to the PS5’s 10, and while the two will share an identical CPU, the Pro will allow you to boost the frequency for around 10% extra power.
IGN also apparently understands that the Pro will have its own upscaling technology, as well as “an AI accelerator” and “custom machine learning architecture”, which sound a little like buzzwords to us.
The Pro will apparently also have a 1TB storage drive and a detachable disc drive, which might explain why Dealabs’ sketch doesn’t seem to show a built-in physical media drive for the console.
Hopefully, if the PS5 Pro does launch in November – and the Dealabs sketch turns out to be accurate – the console will come with a detachable disc drive rather than asking you to buy one separately.
