At long last, Sony revealed its highly anticipated upgraded PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4 Pro.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) CEO, Andrew House, took the stage at the 2016 PlayStation Meeting in New York today to announce the news. As predicted, House began talking about 4K resolutions and the need for an upgraded console to display them before revealing the new device. He said it would be the “number one provider” of HD and high dynamic range (HDR) content for a console, taking a slight jab at the new Xbox One S.
Mark Cerny, Lead System Architect for the PlayStation 4, then took over to explain that the company had “more than doubled the power of the GPU”, using AMD Polaris architecture, and had also boosted the clockrate of the CPU. PS Pro also boasts a 1TB hard drive. The results allow the machine to display 4K textures, with examples including the new Spider-Man game from Insomniac and Ubisoft’s For Honor. He also displayed some examples of HDR’s effects with a showcase of Sony Bend’s Days Gone.
So what does this mean for PlayStation VR, a headset with a 1080p display? Simple; it will instead enhance the power behind the games, providing better performance and visual fidelity. Specifically it could “increase crispness” of visuals, showing Impulse Gear’s anticipated, first-person shooter, Farpoint, as an example.
Speaking in a post-stream interview, Cerny elaborated a little further, saying: “This all dovetails quite nicely with PS VR. We are anticipating games will be much crisper and have more detail to the graphics for the headset.”
PlayStation 4 Pro is coming on November 10th for $399. PS VR, meanwhile, launches on October 13th at $399 for a standalone unit, though you’ll need the PlayStation Camera to actually use it.
Unsurprisingly, the slim version of the original PlayStation 4 was also revealed after a month of solid leaks, that all but confirmed the device. The kit is simply a smaller edition of the first console at a new price of $299/£259, and is coming a week from tomorrow – September 15th. This console will still be able to support PlayStation VR, meaning you can get the full experience for around $700, not including the camera.
The big question now is what this means for Project Scorpio, Microsoft’s upgraded Xbox One that will also support VR. Will PlayStation Pro be able to compete with what’s already being touted as a more powerful console?
UPDATE: Want the full PS4 Pro specs? Sony has now revealed them. Check below.
