The PlayStation Meeting held recently in NYC was quite peculiar, with no new game announcements or any new hardware. At the meeting, it was announced that PS4 slim will be replacing the vanilla model and that the PS4 Neo will now be called PS4 Pro. Also, PS4 Pro is just an incremental upgrade to PS4, designed mainly with 4K TV and gaming in mind.
Whether such minor already-known announcements required a big event like the PlayStation Meeting remains a mystery. Just a press release would have been enough for the announcements about incremental upgrades. Going by what was announced in the PlayStation Meeting, it is evident that the PS4 Pro isn’t all that interesting, even with the improved specs. PS4 Pro is definitely bigger and better than PS4 but it’s not significantly better. So don’t expect games running on PS4 to start running more smoothly all of a sudden on PS4 Pro simply because 4K difference isn’t very noticeable on a big TV screen unless you pay great attention.
It looks like the PS4 Pro is being released as an intermediate version between the PS4 and PS5. In fact, the PS4 Pro is much closer to PS4 than it will ever be to PS5. This is also an indication that Sony doesn’t intend to release a brand new gaming console any time soon. Sorry folks! Looks like you have to settle with PS4 Pro for now.
PS4 PRO Specs
Games like Horizon Zero Dawn do look stunning in 4K. But it really doesn’t matter because unless you have a 4K display to view, you can’t really tell the difference between 1080p and 4K. Whether $400 ($1400 in case you don’t own a 4K display) is worth the differences that are only noticeable with enough close attention is something that the consumers will definitely think about before buying the PS4 Pro. The PS4 Pro boasts AMD based graphics engine GPU with 4.20 TFLOPs, a significant 228% improvement over the plain PS4, which had just 1.84 TFLOPs. Powered by AMD “Jaguar” 8 core CPU, PS4 Pro will sport 8GB GDDR5 Memory with 1TB storage and will offer Bluetooth 4.0 support. The HDMI out port supports 4K/HDR.
No 4K Disc Compatibility?
The PS4 Pro comes with a Blu-ray player that can handle DVDs, but there’s no mention of 4K disc compatibility. The purchase price would seem a little more justified if the PS4 Pro at least had Ultra HD Blu-ray support. But no mention of 4K disc compatibility is very disappointing, to say the least.
With all these problems and given the minor upgrades, the PS4 Pro doesn’t impress much. If you don’t own a Play Station device yet, PS4 Pro will be great to start with. But for the heavy Play Station users already owning PS4 and having high expectations, the PS4 Pro may disappoint. It simply doesn’t spark that excitement which a new gaming console is supposed to bring in.
The PS4 Pro launch will take place on November 10th, 2016. PS5 is still far away and Sony has made it clear that fans should settle for PS4 Pro for now.