jrt87

@McTwist Aside from a few tech wizards like Insomniac, Guerilla and ID Software, devs simply don't optimise anymore. They can shove a 75% finished game out there to 90% of its probable lifetime sales and save a significant chunk of change on optimising it. They may go back and finish the last 25% if they catch enough heat, but they rarely do. Square Enix are the absolute worst for this.

Therefore the PS5 base hardware is struggling with the recent jump in engine tech (especially to UE5) as the lazy dev approach they got away with in cross-gen games is butting up against the reality of the new tech.

Now they have PSSR to lean on so expect them to become even lazier at optimisation. Expect the base PS5 experience to get even worse going forward (less and less performance modes offered would be my guess).

@Joabra01Swe It's anti-PC gaming circlejerk 101

• Costs £1000s every few years
• Games crash all the time
• Constant updates and incompatibility errors
• Windows breaks everything every update
• You have to spend hours changing settings before you can play a game (when choosing a preset is no harder than picking 'fidelity' or 'performance' on console)
• Keyboard and mouse controls suck

@ZeroSum Yes, console-only fanboys being very disingenuous. Getting defensive because they are rapidly ceding the long term value proposition of owning a console over investing into the PC ecosystem.

If you build a PC shrewdly in 2024 instead of buying PS5 Pro, you're not going to need to buy a PS6 in a few years either. Wonder how many also drop £1000+ on laptops, too. Sure, if you need a portable computer for work/education etc, then that form factor is necessary. But if you just sit around your house 99% of the time you're using a computer, then you don't need that device either once you build a gaming PC.

@AverageGamer I don't know about that. My Dad is 58 and he was one building our home PC back in the 90s when he was in his mid to late 20s/early 30s. His generation came of age as the home PC emerged and became commonplace in most homes.

I'm mid 30s now and grew up installing stuff on DOS and having to deal with the various the wild west days of early 3D acceleration settings etc. Spent most of my 20s using Linux on my uni laptop.

I've read it's actually the younger generation who've grown up with touchscreens and walled garden OS who the ones who are mostly falling behind when it comes to knowledge of desktop PC hardware/operating systems.

@HonestHick I really need to flog my Series X. All I've done on it in the last six months is watch Frieren on Crunchyroll and play Silent Hill: Downpour through BC.

@PALversusNTSC You are not getting native 4k raytracing even on most 4000 series cards on the latest UE5 games. I have to turn off all RTX on Wukong on my 4070ti PC just so I can hit 60fps @ 1440p with DLSS Quality (then I turn on Frame Gen to reach 120fps average). What on earth makes you think a Playstation 5 could do it?

I find criticisms about updating drivers (basically all automatic these days) and "crashing" total nonsense. I've gamed about 50/50 PC and Console in the last six years and I've had far more crashes on my PS4/PS5 then I have my PC.

Consoles are just walled garden PCs these days with many of the complaints people used to have of PC (installing games, needing patches/updates, crashes etc). I understand building them can be intimidating, but just get a prebuild, or, better yet, watch the many easy to follow build guides online. I built mine totally from scratch aged thirty with zero prior knowledge, and have done a few complete rebuilds since.

I'm convinced that the most vocal haters of PC online are ultimately people who'd love to have one, but don't have the means to acquire one. It's such an important pillar of the gaming, that it's madness to dismiss it so roundly. PC, home console and handheld are all vitally important to the history of the hobby.

I'm still reeling from that Fassbender AC movie.

Playstation has moved further and further away from Japan, and Japan has moved further and further away from Playstation. It still has a significant presence there, but nothing like it once was.

Pro is going to sell miserably over there.

A headline worthy of being alongside the likes of 'Remember Terry Duckworth from Coronation Street? You won't believe what he looks like now!'

Couldn't believe what I was seeing when I loaded up that Rebirth 60fps mode demo. Some of the character models and environmental textures looked as blurry as a Wii game at times on my C1. Then the devs admitted it looked poor in a Twitter statement, issued a patch for the demo, and it looked even worse after!

@30fps60fps I could still drink concentrate OJ, but in a world where freshly squeezed is available, I haven't had to for well over a decade now.

Playstation's chief architect has spoken and put on record what many have said for years: 30fps is choppy. It's only gotten worse as more move to OLED panels for their gaming. Bloodborne replays and some Switch games are the only time I have to put up with 30fps these days in modern games, and I usually complete a couple dozen a year.

@Mustoe Same people who were telling me the PS5 was going to do 4K/60 back in the summer of 2020 at a time when I had a 2070/9700k rig and knew I couldn't with that.

Cerny described thirty frames per second as 'choppy'.

Will quote him every time someone tries to convince us it's fine for an input based visual medium because 'it's more cinematic'.

@Mustoe There's nothing you can say to these people at this point. Sony could have announced it at £1200 and they'd be here calling us 'pocket watchers' and telling us it's a 'luxury product' that we don't have to buy, if we don't want.

@riceNpea That's good.

I've been critical of Pro reveal but this is good approach. Why is it 'an added complication'?

Presumably they charge when it ships? As some would probably put a preorder in to buy more time to think it through.

Good way to deter scalping if they restrict it to one per customer.

@SlipperyFish

Sorry, where exactly have Sony suggested 4k/60 on "all games" on Pro?

Where was the showcase of recently demanding UE5 titles running at 4k/60?

I'm so happy we have Mark Cerny on record rightly referring to 30fps gameplay as 'choppy'.

@UnlimitedSevens

Expect the drives and stands to be hoarded by scalpers — probably what's happening here already. Low risk compared to the Pro itself.

@Vaako007 You realise people can cover all their living expenses and have disposable income, but still self-impose a limit to what they'll willing to pay for luxury entertainment purchases?

Or is this another humble brag post?

"Consumer electronics are going up in price generally".

Yes, but the average wage isn't.

@nedbvai I did the same to Malenia as I ran a bleed build and lucked out on the RNG with no waterfowl dance.

Doesn't mean others didn't find her fight difficult.

Cool for those yet to get there, but after those seven hours I never intend to go up against that guy again.

@themightyant That's fair, I suppose.

I know my next phone will be bought upfront outright for the first time. Will certainly make me scrutinise the various models more instead of just going for the flagship ultra model.

@themightyant People keep mentioning phones but the vast majority are bought on 24-36 month cost spreading contracts with the option to upgrade to the latest models for token fees to retain you on the network's talk/data plans.

Different products, different markets, different pricing models, different consumer base.

@Raydog1108 Well, many were sold PS5 on promises of 4K/60 and look how they went. Notice how Sony didn't show any of the recent UE5 games that have struggled so far on base PS5. What about CPU bound games? They haven't upgraded that component other than a slight boost to the clocks.

As for the SSD capacity, do you not realise that many of us already own a 1TB SSD that we installed in our base PS5, and thus a 1TB Pro and lower price would have been better?

At least we now have someone of Cerny's calibre on record admitting that 30fps is 'choppy'.

@EfYI I absolutely agree with you if PS5 is your central platform, you have no PC whatsoever, you'll be playing lots of thirty party AAA, and you're somebody who cares about the technical polish and performance of those games.

But if you also game even a little on PC and have a starter setup already, your money is much better spent on upgrades there once you sell your components.

Ultimately, I think they've still alienated many of the first group with the price and omission of basics like disc drive and stand. Leaving out a £2 bit of moulded plastic from a £700 purchase? Read the room.

@S1ayeR74 It's just a kid flexing what they don't in actuality have. Best to ignore.

@DaniPooo I get all that.

My point is even in smaller production quantities, many of the people they'd hope to be targeting with this aren't happy with the value proposition and won't be buying (at launch, at least).

@LogicStrikesAgain I'm not the guy you originally replied to, but that's ok.

@LogicStrikesAgain Because the taxes vary from State to State.

(I'm half-American/half-Brit so had many years to ponder these subtle differences).

@EddieGallad Sure thing, tough guy.

@MrMagic I didn't realise you could take the PS5 Pro on a plane and play games on an OLED screen off a battery. Cerny should have told us, might have softened the blow of the suggested RRP.

@johnedwin If you're going to be silly and assert something without proof, I'm just going to ignore it and wish you a good evening. I'm not into the Console fanboy wars nonsense.

@bindiana The overwhelming number of comments across all PS5 Pro stories since 4.10pm have been critical + social media is a bloodbath. This is a Playstation enthusiast website where the most positivity should be found, yet it's scant. This isn't going to sell well at all unless they come out with a charm offensive and alter their value proposition (ie, cut out trying to nickle and dime us for a plastic stand, for a start).

What is it even for? So I can play Rebirth at 60fps without blurry graphics? Something that should have been the case on base PS5 in the first place. The devs even admitted to it, patched the demo to "fix it" and made it look even worse.

The Pro is not good value to somebody who already owns a PS5 (vast majority of us) just because an equivalent PC rig + setup is two to three times as much.

My M2 ShotTriggers titles will never have looked or played better!

@DaniPooo I'm fairly certain Sony would prefer readers of a Playstation enthusiast site to upgrade and not 'stick with what they have'. They have probably calculated that the people who only buy Fifa and CoD every autumn will be 'sticking with what they have'.

You and a dozen other posters on here may be Fry - Take My Money.jpeg on this, but that isn't going to translate into a sale success in Sony's eyes.

@StrickenBiged

The PS4 Pro's market share was 20% of all Playstation 4 owners.

This is a poll on a site of Playstation enthusiasts and 80% aren't interested.

Wouldn't trust Square Enix as far as I can throw them to patch Rebirth competently so as to have 60fps w/ acceptable image quality.

At least we've finally somewhat of an admission from them that their excessively blurry performance mode was unacceptable.

Having gone with Midnight Black plates and black Dualsense a few years ago, I'd probably need to add slim black plates to the separate HDD and vertical stand purchase.

Concord and then this? Sony having a great week! People will say "but but they'll sell out", but how many are they producing at this price point?

Looking at £400-500 to upgrade to Pro with disc drive if you flog base model for £300 (that resell price will crater soon, too).

Madness.

@redd214 Base PS5 resell prices about to crash. Probably looking at £400-£500 "upgrade" price if you want a Pro and disc drive.

What were they thinking?

£700 and no disc drive?

Wow. No chance.

@30fps60fps

Xbox has effectively tried that with the Series consoles, and it's causing all manner of problems.

30fps is the secret shame of the game development industry. The lowest accepted standard for getting a game out there if you're struggling with optimisation and/or your publisher insists you cheap out on dev budget.

Why would you ever market a console around such a known inferiority? 30fps is not a feature, it's a compromise. One that's being increasingly rejected by console consumers outside of the masses who only buy COD and Fifa every autumn (whose games are typically 60fps anyway).

@Pranwell

I agree to an extent. There are definitely going to be some who are saying such things because actually they'd like a Pro, but it's beyond their means.

But as somebody who could afford it with relatively ease, generally likes to be on the cutting edge of tech, and, to be frank, sometimes has poor impulse control — they really need to sell this thing to me. Of course, if I didn't have a very capable PC, it would be an obvious purchase. But there just aren't the exclusives there at present, in my mind.

@KilloWertz Couldn't agree more.

Square Enix, or at least the dev teams on their recent mainline FF titles, are particularly untalented when it comes to technical optimisation on PS5.

Their PC ports leave a lot to be desired, too.