Last week, alleged details about a PlayStation 5 Pro were shared online, and now one industry insider is claiming that it’s accurate to information they’ve heard, which includes a launch window of September 2024.
This comes from Giant Bomb’s Jeff Grubb who, in the Dec. 15 episode of the Game Mess Decides podcast, described the recent leak as “almost certainly real based on what [he’s] heard now” (thanks, VGC). You can hear his comments for yourself at the 24:23 mark.
“Obviously, I’m not the only one out there saying that, but I can throw my “confirm, confirm, confirm” into the ring for everybody,” adds Grubb. He says it could potentially launch next September, although the initial leak claims a reveal is planned for September, with the PlayStation 5 Pro releasing a couple of months later in November. Regardless, a fall launch makes sense, as it’s right before the holiday period—an optimal time to sell a new console model.
There’s been quite a lot of chatter about the PS5 Pro, named as such for supposedly being more powerful than the current console (so, what the PlayStation 4 Pro was to the original PS4). Even Microsoft thinks one is in the works (via VGC), but Sony itself has never acknowledged it.
There’s a lot of technical jargon surrounding this alleged console, but Grubb believes the main feature of the PS5 Pro will be Sony’s own DLSS solution. What that means is, as Grubb explains, “they use their own machine learning to improve images so they can run things at a really high resolution and really high frame rate […] they would be able to do even more than just better hardware ray tracing.”
Although the PS5 is quite powerful, its games typically require you to prioritize either frame rate or graphics. So, you usually can’t have ray tracing and 60fps at the same time. By the sounds of it, a hypothetical PS5 Pro would be powerful enough to manage both.
We can’t say for certain how accurate these claims are, but there were rumors of Sony launching a slimmer version of the PS5 for months, and that turned out to be real. As for Grubb, he has a good track record of sharing insider information. He routinely claimed Nintendo was remastering Metroid Prime (which finally launched back in February) and accurately predicted Sony would have a big gaming showcase ahead of E3 2023 (via TheGamer). E3 2023 wound up being canceled, but Sony did air such a showcase in May.
