this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2024
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I don't understand why they would release a PS5 Pro. For the PS4 / Xbox One generation, it was somewhat justified because 4K TV became widely available and desirable shortly after the release of this generation, making the consoles almost obsolete.
This time around, I don't see the performance of theses consoles as a big problem. Interest has declined because prices of consoles and games are high, and there are not that many exiting games to play on them.
Making a more powerful variant has some disadvantages too, making game development more complex to support all variants. Microsoft has already suffered from this strategy with the Xbox series X/S.l, e.g:with BG3 local multiplayer
The problem with Xbox is that Microsoft requires parity with both consoles, so the more powerful X constantly gets gimped because the S can't handle something. With the PS5 and Pro this probably wouldn't be the case since games aren't gutted because of a less powerful model requiring parity, so they can just add some higher graphical fidelity to the Pro
It's it the same problem tho? Xbox S/X can also target different graphics (resolution, frame rate, quality) but feature parity is required.
Would anyone be ok with, for example, split screen multiplayer mode available only on PS5 Pro, but not on PS5 nor PS5 slim?
The difference is how low spec the series S is.
Something like Baldurs Gate 3 on existing PS5 was able to handle everything they needed including the split screen co-op. However, they couldn’t release on Xbox at all because they couldn’t make a version that worked on both S and X but also they weren’t allowed by MS rules to pull features from the S.
A PS5/PS5-Pro pair would be easier since the bottom spec is still about comparable to the Series X and the new tier is just a bit extra for some nice-to-haves and less having to handicap a game to get it to run on the low spec machine. It’s still extra work but shouldn’t mean having to rework an entire game to get it to work at all.