Update: PlayStation 4 Pro won’t support 4K Blu-ray and features 4.20 TFLOPS GPU which is significantly weaker than the Xbox Scorpio. These specifications are the same as the ones leaked months ago.
During a rather sleep-inducing keynote, Sony announced the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro alongside the already leaked PlayStation 4 Slim. According to Sony, the PlayStation 4 Slim will launch this month worldwide, and will cost—hold on to your seats—the same as the much more capable Xbox One Slim console which launched last month.
Beyond that, the PlayStation 4 Slim will not feature 4K streaming or 4K gaming. These features will be relegated to the new Pro version. The Pro version, which features double the GPU computing power of the PlayStation 4—this puts the PlayStation 4 Pro GPU at a mere 3.68 TFLOPS probably—or almost 40% less capable than the upcoming Xbox One Scorpio announced by Microsoft at E3 this year. I still think this is on the lower end and the specs are probably exactly the same as the 4.14 TFLOPS which was leaked many months ago.
Sony has been extremely coy during the keynote discussing the PlayStation 4 Pro and its specifications. This is pretty much understandable because of the rather mind-boggling hardware capability that Sony will shove down their user’s throats this year, most likely at a premium. To top this off, the PlayStation 4 Pro will not be capable of rendering native 4K output like the Scorpio, it instead uses a feature PlayStation 4 users have relegated to the dustbin after Quantum Break launched on Xbox One. The feature, which will render games in 1080p or other resolutions, and then upscales them via “Temporal Reconstruction” to produce a “close enough” to 4K image. What this instead produces is a rather jarring gameplay experience and severe ghosting. You can see the blurry graphics which were showcased in the Horizon Zero Dawn video.
Sony has officially lost the plot with the PlayStation 4 Pro, and it will be interesting to see how many gamers they mislead in buying the disaster which will launch this year. The PlayStation 4 Pro’s only saving grace is the price, coming in at $400. But, does this really offer a big leap, large enough to validate buying this over waiting for the Scorpio? No it doesn’t in my opinion because now that the price of the device has been revealed, Microsoft will do its best to match it.
Will you be buying the PlayStation 4 Pro, or will you be waiting for the upcoming Xbox One Scorpio? Comment below.
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.