Sony Have Lost Their Minds

Josh Brown the PlayStation 5 pro has been shown off and the reception at least in the few seconds I've seen we're literally recording seconds after the um stream finished is a bit negative in the old live chat H lots of L's doing the rounds but we're going to break various features down as we have the first official word on what the PlayStation 5 Pro is delivered by the sleepiest man of all time mark C but we're both big fans um and there's a lot to get to here initial reactions to uh what they shown off before we start breaking down some features well initial reac actions I was every time Mark Cy started talking about a new pillar of the big three I thought Mark you slide dog I'm going to have to buy this thing and then they revealed the price which completely truth be told Scott rattled me it rattled me to the point where I thought it was a typo then I thought there might have been some kind of mark on my screen that was obscuring the number and then even as we record this I'm worried that I'm going to say the number out loud and that it's somehow going to be wrong and I've mistake there's been a mistake I have to double check um literally twice three times over that that was actually the number that they're asking for $700 £700 for the playstation5 pro £200 $200 more than the existing PS5 slim and and the vertical sound is sold separately just if you if you're if you're a vertical individual um they want to charge you something separately for that as well um also the only model that was shown off at the the end of the PlayStation 5's uh technical showcase is a digital version of the PS5 um however leaks across the most of this year have uh mentioned they detachable dis Drive um so whilst that's yet to be confirmed officially it seems like um you know so you want to push towards digital stuff or at least get the um connotation out there the PlayStation 5 Pro is a digital system um but they didn't mention storage they didn't mention you know gigabyte sizes things like that there's a lot more to get to um but let's do price first and then we'll break down some features and there's a lot more um that has already been in leaks from earlier this year but a lot of people probably didn't already see those things um but yeah thoughts on I guess wider thoughts on the price it's um prohibitive in a major way I think at least for the most for the widest audience and I know there's an argument to be made and I was prepared to make it in this video that it is a Pro System it is in my head a luxury item in the same way that in iPhone 15 or 16 Pro is you know it's all the extra bells and whistles that the normal quote unquote you know might not want might not care about they might I am the normal person yeah they might just want to sit down and pick a performance mode or pick Fidelity uh for me I was looking at everything that was packed in the PS5 Pro and it was what I was expected expecting in a good way and I was prepared to pay the leaked price for that at least at launch um which earlier today was circulating and that was about 590 which is in and of itself steep but I figured you know it is a luxury thing Fair enough 700 quid 699 is a crazy price for me to pay who already owns a PS5 I think it will go eliminate a lot of those people potentially looking to upgrade who don't just kind of have that money to spare because in comparison to the console they've already got it's it's an upgrade of course it is but not a substantial amount to drop 700 big ones on a machine that they just bought 5 years ago I think it might be attractive to people were just picking up PlayStation 5 this year and kind of want to eliminate that question of do I play in performance do I play in Fidelity let's just get the the the best one and you know split the difference that way so I I guess it's attractive to a certain demographic it's just I thought maybe this is ignorant maybe this is arrogant sorry maybe this is my ego I thought I was like the target audience for this I was there buying a PlayStation 4 pro day one I was looking forward to this and suddenly I see that price and the games that they're showing off with it all of which are games that I've already played um and it's not something I'm going to go out and buy at that price point at launch may still get one but I certainly won't be pre-ordering as soon as we finish recording this no I thought it was really it's interesting uh the way that they try to show it off where you do all these side by sides of like this is what it looks like on PS5 Pro and it largely looks the same and obviously most of these things aren't going to demo very well in a live stream you're going to have things that are bit crushed you're not going to have visuals that are going to be you know indicative of what it's like to actually play on a 4K display or whatever um but I do think they I do think the pro half step systems are almost impossible to Market um cuz it as as was the case with the PS4 Pro um you know you can't have too substantial a Leap Forward because it undermines the fact that so many people bought a PlayStation 4 in the first place um but you can't do nothing at all because you're trying to sell this mid-step thing now I to me it's just the fact that you're trying to put a price tag on what your R&D department has done in the years since the console came out it's like you might as well charge for that realizing what you can get away with having done the PS4 Pro um but the angle overall on selling it is the one of the most fascinating Parts because um but the PS4 Pro that came alongside you know an industry that that was just sort of beset with so many bugs technical issues like most of the games across the mid-2010s absolutely sucked in regards to launch day um and the way that um you know presentation was put together was like Hey we've talked to Dev you they had Todd Howard saying like we need the extra power and everything else and this one is like zeroing in on a conversation which is very much of the time which is the annoying at least I would call it annoyance of having to choose between a Fidelity mode and a performance mode and they just hone right in on that the entire um or most of the technical showcase was just showing that up going like y this is something no one likes choosing these modes three quarters of people apparently choose performance which good on you I'm with you um but it's interesting that um you know you that's kind of the the reason to get a PlayStation 5 Pro is to then just choose a pro mode and just be able to get 60 FPS with 4K and then awesome rate tracing and whatever else um and so to go down that route they've got this whole big three style sales pitch of a larger GPU so better rendering overall Advanced Ray tracing whatever that means and AI driven upscaling um which we can get to one by one um thoughts on the whole the the the trying to answer the question of fidelity versus performance though no like I said like all of that messaging was working on me when I was watching it in fact you know I was seeing the games that they were showing off to um showcase what it means to have this Pro mode to have you know I think I think he kept saying almost Fidelity like which to me gave him a lot of leeway was like ille like he was um advised to say that legally because it's not going to maybe reach Fidelity board but it's going to try and it's going to come close you know I was looking at The Last of Us Part Two I was looking at Spider-Man 2 Allan Wake 2 all games that I'm intending to replay hopefully towards the end of the year or into next year and it got me wondering oh do I wait now do I wait and play them on the PlayStation 5 Pro um in this Pro mode and get the best version of them now that's being dashed a little bit but I think it makes sense for them to focus on that um sort of divisive element of the current generation like you say three quarters of people use performance modes but across the board performance modes at least for my taste T I probably would be someone who plays on um you know the Fidelity mode or the quality mode or whatever I just don't I don't think they're good enough just for me personally you know I was playing some games recently completely can't remember off the top of my head Star Wars Outlaws that was the one and the resolution bump to me just isn't worth the 60 frames I know a lot of people won't care about that but it does feel like a sacrifice when I choose performance mode and it does feel like a sacrifice when I choose Fidelity mode because you're getting that choppy 30 frames per second which I can live with but of course I would even though I'm a graphics man I know I prefer 60 you know 60 feels smooth it looks great um so I kind of want The Best of Both Worlds but I don't know I I wonder how dominant that conversation is I wonder how many people are like you and I who kind of get caught up on maybe missing out on one mode or another or how many people are just just have their preferences already and won't be swayed by this because it's a nice addition but they're not too bothered just going on performance or just going on quality and having a good time yeah that's the thing is that we'd I'd love to get an answer to that and people can like shut off down in the comments kind of thing um but the fact that this is such a ludicrously high price point is is going to skew the answer to that question the idea being that if you paid for this console and then you did care about answering ing that but I think that because it is $700 700 um there's not even a conversion there it just straight it just straight up is700 like $699.99 but do and pounds um you know I think that is going to put people off and when it comes to the AI upscaling stuff though um Sony have a thing called PlayStation spectral super resolution pssr um which is their in-house version of um this AI tool this upscaling tool which is um Sony's own version of nvidia's dlss which is deep learning super sampling um I don't know anywhere near enough to be technically minded to break it down too far beyond the idea of a software based answer to upscaling various video games um and the D dlss technology is apparently what's R for the switch 2 or Nintendo's next system as a way to get um a software based upscaling answer to um the resolution problems that obviously something like the switches had and to get games running at 4K that weren't necessarily made in 4k in the first place um and so Sony have kind of got their own version of that and in Sony's eyes I guess you need the pro to have enough guts to run that thing H to make everything run at 4K as well as keeping the high the the good frame rate um and these software based solutions to frame rate resolution combos uh seem to be the way forward but uh I think it's interesting that Sony have just potentially seen where this is going to go in the industry um because dlss is already a big talking point and as a solution to the problem that they're already talking about with the Fidelity performance stuff and then have gone let's develop our own one and then we'll tar it on the pro and say that you need this console uh to run this stuff because my G reaction to them talking about it was surely the PS5 can do this as well uh if this is a software based solution then I don't know well the thing is right like we've had versions of this for I don't know a long long time now like you said there is dlsr I'm not even going to do it because I my voice isn't working today Scott my mouth isn't working I can't do um acronyms today so we've already had software like this you know Sony had their own um systems they've used third party systems we've had 4K checkerboarding we've had this upscaling in the past we've had texture AI upscaling you know in Tomb RIT earlier this year so it's not like it's necessarily a new technology I do think it's interesting that Sony's opting to um build their own inhouse version I'm interested to see what that looks like in motion when we're playing the game because like you said you know like the side by sides on that front especially don't really necessarily do it justice in a 9 Minute presentation so that would be something maybe that you only really see when you've got it on your own Telly and you've got your own resolution uh that you can see on whatever size monitor you're using so it's a it's it's a it's an unsexy thing I think this this this this software that they've used I I I I I don't know it's kind of like to me that's the version of HDR this time around like the PlayStation 4 Pro was um one of that's big pillars was HDR and that was another kind of system that you didn't really understand if you saw it because most of us watching the presentation at the time wouldn't have had a HDR screen our computers weren't HDR you needed to get a television that would support it and support the right version of HDR at the time so I think that is one of those issues where a few of the things maybe even like the ray tracing that Cy mentioned it's a toughest sell at 700 quid because a lot of the stuff you won't really know how it runs or how it's affecting the games in comparison to the ones you're already playing until you have it and it's like it's a big risk for a lot of people yeah I think that the I just keep com back to the price and I also keep thinking about Sony I think about Sony history I think about how much they overcharged people for the Playstation 3 um and I know that they argued that they had to back then because the Blu-ray diodes were so rare and that was all such new technology but right now we have a whole bunch of PlayStation 5 price hikes going on over in Japan I think the system is 82% higher than it was at launch four years ago um and now with the Advent of the PlayStation 5 Pro you've got them going 00 $100 more than the leaked price um which is really interesting in terms of just saying what can we get away with what will the market respond to if this is a luxury product for the most hardcore Gamers the people who care the most about this stuff what can we get away with and then will that trickle over into oh my God you've got to see how this game runs on a pro and then see if that gets wider especially towards Christmas I think they are in the hubristic mode that they've been in a few times before and they're just seeing what they can get away with um but yeah for another pillar of something they talk about the larger GPU um various leaks across the year have mentioned the PS5 Pro running 45% faster in regards to rendering um and also the advanced rate tracing stuff alongside it they did show off um PS5 pro games running I did laugh at Jedi Survivor being one of those games and showing the water and just being like cuz that thing was completely DOA broken when it came out when you would stand next to a body of water that game would just tank so um I get that they're getting out there going like hey you wouldn't have that problem on a PS5 Pro but the problem there was optimization it was development time it was being able to patch it after launch um you know the the elephant in the room uh the glitching elephant in the room is forever optimization than Dev windows um you know like it's just you can keep doing this with the the the the half step systems and getting us to pay another huge amount of money hoping that that fixes everything um but until you solve the actual turnover of game developers um and stop losing 10,000 people a year then you're not actually going to fix anything so I to me it's it's all part of the same conversation in terms of can developers even use this stuff um and the the hope that something like pssr or dlss um you know or vrr if you have a TV that's capable of variable refer fresh rate um these instant fixes kind of thing um just how applicable that stuff actually is when you get to game by game releases I think yeah I think it's a great point you know I think both things can be true one is that third party games especially need better optimization you can't have something like Jedi Survivor come out and in both of its performance and quality modes uh just have the game tank when you go into the water I love that game but that stuff was inexcusable right and will you know uh a more more powerful system just fix that without work from the devs and the Publishers probably not but I I do think that's something definitely to bear in mind if you're buying this console for third party games not every one of those developers not every one of those Publishers is going to utilize this new horsepower to the best of a game's capabilities or the best of their capabilities however I think it's still it's worth to invest in the R&D to make an upgraded system like this because because we have seen incredibly well optimized games still force you to choose between a bunch of modes still force you to have that compromise I so I I suppose you can argue and I think like always man like like with with the PS4 Pro or the Xbox series uh the Xbox One X back in the day like the the people who are going to utilize the features of the pro the most are going to be like the first party developers it's going to be your insn X your naughty dogs and whatnot so I I would say that that's that should be I think your primary reason to buy this if you're going to buy it because those developers are the only ones guaranteed to fulfill the potential of the pro and to fulfill the potential of your investment if you're relying on your EAS or Ubisoft or whoever they're not going to have as much of an investment in it it's not saying like they they're lesser Publishers or they're worse or whatever but they are not incentivized to support the pro in the same way that Sony is because it's their own thing and they're you know going to profit from that the most oh yeah definitely I mean there there was a bit where Mark Sun did mention that various like patches and upgrades are in the works for certain titles but they obviously favored first party stuff interestingly before I move on to the wider leaks and stuff one of the games shown was Assassin's Creed uh Shadows so the Assumption being that although they didn't as far I unless I missed it they didn't put a release date on this thing just yet uh it still seems like it's going to be imminent um Shadows is out in November so um there is that um to Pivot into wider information about the PS5 Pro though stuff that wasn't in the technical showcase but has been reported by the V reported by Insider gaming um we're apparently getting a new controller um a new version of the Dual sense now it doesn't it's not it doesn't seem to be a dual sense Edge which was the customizable premium controller from January 2023 instead it's just a new standard dual sense model um that's going to be $55 more if you buy it by itself um and it has better triggers and more battery life apparently uh battery life is the main thing anyone playing astrobot right now which not as many views it should be looking at that game sales uh will know that astrobot absolutely shreds battery life um on a dual sense um so it's cool to have that bundled in with the new PS5 Pro and that will be the new dual sense however obviously £5 more $5 more kind of sucks when the when the controllers are already $60 60 anyway um alongside that from The Verge we have 100 gigs more memory um which is good there's always the case that when you get a console home when you look at the actual list of the storage it's always less than what it was marketed as um but 100 Gig more even on those reduced numbers is better um and the console apparently support HDR 10 plus and Dolby Vision um knows a little bit more um but uh thoughts on all of that yeah I mean oh God the you mentioned it earlier but the idea that Sony is just hiking the prices up because they they can is something that I cannot ignore you mentioned the uh dual sense Edge from the other year that was another thing like the pro that I was all in on that I thought I was going to get and then I was just priced out you know 200s I think that was retailing for $200 like it half the system price just absolutely outrageous I mean I love my PlayStation VR2 but that thing retailed at over 500 quid as well you've got games going up to 70 you've got the PlayStation portal being seemingly overpriced even though that's doing quite well and it is feels like we're in an ER I've seen a lot of people tweeting out that you know they can't believe that games uh game consoles are going up the price is going up as the generation goes on not going down and that is absolutely crazy and it's crazy to have the PS five Pro within that market I mean you mentioned so many other things there Scott as well about the idea of you know uh like there's a state of play apparently coming I think we need to see more games from that state of play it was cool seeing um you know titles that have already been released something like Shadows that's coming out imminently but I think we need to see something properly utilize the power of the PlayStation 5 Pro that is on the horizon most likely from Sony's first party stuff because I don't think I mean maybe you can but I don't think you can sell a a console for 700 quid on the basis of old games and especially when previously Xbox for instance has been so good at supporting old games and updating them anywhere I know Sony has been as well you know they released Last of Us remastered last year they've already done patches when the PlayStation 5 came out for previous previously released games but I I don't think you can just rely on that no man not at all I think that like if you if they were able to say Hey you buy a PlayStation 5 Pro and you put any game disc in it um and it automatically upscales or you play any game that you already own and it upscales it does the pssr stuff it gets in there and it AI upscales everything and even a game from the PlayStation 4's launch or whatever that's backwards compatible then looks absolutely gorgeous that will be one thing but I the I think by the sounds of it the way Sony described it it's going to be per Studio choosing to do a PS5 Pro patch um which which ironically is unlike the way that something like vrr vrr works on you know fancy TVs like I have an LG CX um and if a game supports the the console has the variable refresh rate stuff turned on it just works that you don't even notice the frame rate being helped by it um but at the same time it does work Star Wars Outlaws has a third Graphics mode that you can just toggle on and that doesn't even show up if you don't have a vrr TV um so what to a degree we're getting into the weeds with all this stuff like it's I said it 7 years ago with the PS 4 Pro but we're becoming PC Gamers we're starting look at every little individual permutation of just how do I get a good performing video game U and I maintain that should not be our problem so I'm always sick of that stuff the thing is though right like in its own way the PS5 Pro seems to be um confronting that head on in a way and saying look yeah maybe we did Via too far in the options and PC territory with the launch version of the PS5 let us take all that of your hands let us just decide for you and manage manage to uh smash both sides of the coin together so you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore if that was a if that was a problem that they hadn't come up with in the first place if that wasn't an industry issue that was born out of optimization development time Etc then that would that would be fine but it's it's such a wider issue that then they get to come back in and go we've got the solution guys we're going to sell you the solution to the problem that we put out in the first place not them first party but it's such a wider industry issue um and even Sony aren't guilty of you know if they were this pristinely managed operation you wouldn't have of us factions being canceled or or whatever like I do think it's a much wider issue and I I I can't get away from seeing the you know we're going to um offer you the solution with a 700 pound price tag kind of thing uh pay to make the problem go away kind of stuff even though I I'm leaning a little bit to it towards hyperbole in away but I do genuinely think that no it's it's interesting and I'm hesitant to turn this news video into one of our podcasts Scott tailford will no doubt revisit subscribe to the W subscribe on all good podcasting platforms um but I have to I have to say that I I see where you're coming from there there are industry issues with optimization however I don't think this sort of Crossroads we're at now between being forced to make these decisions is a is a problem that has been invented that they're now trying to um make you pay to go away I do think it partly came from the desire from players to have those options to be locked off for so many years on consoles with only 30 frames per second or only a certain resolution and we finally fin got those and realized that's kind of not perfect it kind of comes with compromise um a lesson that PC Gamers have been been understanding for years right and I I I just I just I can't look at Sony with how well optimized a lot of their games are not every single one but a lot of them and think that it's like the problem is the developers in that way sometimes it certainly is but sometimes you do just need that extra Hardware to um get the games over the line so you don't have to make those compromises from a tech standpoint like like the rate tracing thing I know we kind of joke about what that is and how it implements games but I do think you can see it um from that perspective as well like I love R tracing when it's done well but so many times you see rare tracing put into games it's kind of like the worst version of it and it looks all right it looks okay it doesn't look huge deal better than screen space Reflections or anything that we have been used to for the past 10 years so hopefully um just getting this more this this uh bigger amount of raw power and horse power alleviates those problems and um allows devs to kind of just boost those settings as much as possible in a way that they might be constricted um to doing now don't know that's what you would hope for yeah you would hope that it's just like you have a vision for a video game sick just just aim for it and then no compromises and you can put that thing out we'll call it the pro mode we'll call you could have called it a PlayStation mode multiple Generations ago Which is my issue but still you can call it a prom mode and then you can just execute on that thing and that's perfect and the very last thing um is something that has retroactively kind of been confirmed coming from a leak from a good few months ago an individual called Brian Potter um who leaked various bits of information that have now been confirmed um and so part of that leak was a state of play for September 19th um so now now that we're coming out with the PlayStation 5 de uh Pro demonstration the Assumption being that maybe that's where we see more Pro modes or games that are going to be launched on PS5 Pro or whatever um cuz that could fold in first party third party as well um thoughts on that thing I think I'm I kind of want to see a bit more although to me um you know I was kind of on the fence I'm a I don't mind paying to make a problem go away kind of thing um I would like you just play the best version of a video game but as soon as they said it was £700 like I'm out I'm done it's going to be a few years in the future type thing um and so I'm kind of largely distanced from this unless you somehow show off a version of the PS5 I have a game running on Pro that looks demonstrably better um I think they've lost sales doing it this way but that is my Approach yeah I know what you mean I I do think yeah we need to see games we need to see the road map of what's to come from PlayStation across 2025 and across you know the next half of this console generation essentially I don't think that'll come in a state of Play Because state of player players have been so lowkey showcases we've had a few good ones the one earlier this year was pretty good I thought yeah but it's always like tepid enthusiasm isn't it it's always like yeah it was pretty good it was all right um and to Xbox's credit while in my opinion I don't think they've had as good first party releases or exclusives over the first half of the generation I do think their plan for the second half is much more exciting and much more tantalizing like we know stuff like fables coming Perfect Dark gears and eeday like a lot of games that I'm personally really excited for and I need Sony to finally start showing us some stuff like that we've had a lot of big hitters but what are we buying into the ecosystem for I think this showcase today just having the PS5 Pro available is good for people who are just jumping in now like I said who want to play all of these old games but I do think Sony also needs to give people a reason to want to upgrade as well to want to spend that money for death stranding 2 or Marvel's Wolverine or whatever else they've got cooking that's unannounced like they need a big they need a strong shortcase man even before this was announced but now that this price point is out there it feels like the pressure's on even more yeah man definitely and that's the that's the wider ongoing conversation is that to me I look at a Sony that is reeling from their life service plans Going Up in Smoke And then trying to Pivot back around a single player the potential huge success of astar um at least online but then that in terms of the the YouTube likes and the social media post hasn't really transferred over to sales at least just yet um and you know where the hell they want to go going forward and how they actually want to utilize this technology um the hardware software combined um but let us know you think down in the comments below PlayStation 5 Pro are you convinced I think it's impossible to mark it but we'll see you know what man I'm going to tag one thing on here um if they announce Red Dead Redemption 2's next gen upgrade and it's PS5 Pro exclusive I'll be bu 160 FPS that's what you hang on they could not do it until now £700 that's how you do it