PlayStation 5 Pro Live Q&A With Scott Stein: Taking Your Questions

hello I'm Scott Stein and I'm an editor CET and I'm talking to you live after an exclusive trip that I made last week to go to PlayStation headquarters where I got to meet with Mark cery and hideaki Nino to talk about the PS5 Pro and to play the PS5 Pro you saw that in the video you can read about it on CNET this is not a PlayStation 5 Pro this is just a PlayStation 5 but I just wanted to hear to for to comparison purposes just to refer to something um and you know what the PS5 Pro is not that different in size it's actually a little bit smaller it's got black ribbing and it's $700 and it's coming out November 7th and a lot of the graphic upgrades sound like they're very you know 4K 60 frame per second optimized uh in terms of performance I'm sure you have a lot of questions and Tara Brown who is our social media Guru is here to send a lot of editorial questions my way that we have and also field questions from you that I'm sure you also have so we can just Dive Right into that and talk about my experience yes scottt we have so many questions from some of our editorial staff um that obviously didn't get to enjoying this experience um in testing the PS5 Pro so let's let's get in some of the questions and then we'll obviously take questions um from the chats as well we are live on Tik Tok Instagram YouTube um and X so we're feeding a bunch of different questions um so some of the questions that we have to start off um how many uh you usba and USBC ports are on the new console yes I got a quick look at it when I was seeing it kind of bolted down you know in in a room at Sony and it looks like they replaced one of the rear uh usba with USBC look pretty similar otherwise uh you know Wi-Fi 7 is built in now but you know I'm I'm it looks like a pretty similar Port experience a little more USBC Focus now um so I hope that helps yeah and of course also with um the PS5 Pro uh people also were talking of course about the vertical stand the fact it's not included in that $700 price is obviously a huge um a huge thing so they wanted to know um how well uh the console stands without it yeah you know it's one of those things about getting an early look at something is sometimes those things aren't clear when you come out of there like I actually did not know at that point that the stand was not included with the console that's a big bummer but um you know it was also hard to tell when I saw it stood up whether it was being fixed there with with extra stuff or not so that's all TBD in terms of how well it stands I assume that it would stand as well as the PlayStation 5 but it's also supposed to be able to rest horizontally we'll see when we actually have one that's that's you know loose out of the box that we can we can set up and play uh closer to November and and with obviously Sony making um putting out this PS5 Pro do we think Microsoft may follow suit with an updated Xbox series X pro next year or any kind of rumors with that it's a good question Microsoft is a weird one to predict I mean Microsoft you know has so many feet in PC gaming as well and I'm still curious whether Microsoft will do some sort of steam deck like uh gaming handheld too so you know it's entire you know an update we're we're definitely at the point where Sony was actually passed where it had been on updates on cycle of the PlayStation 4 is four years into the cycle of the PlayStation 5 um so I guess I'll have to see I wouldn't like wait around for it but um you know it's a good question and on that topic of um the PS5 Pro and the PS5 is almost 5 years old and you know like you said we be coming up on the end of its life cycle so will this new uh release of the PS5 Pro any potential upcoming news for the ps6 because I know that's one that a lot of people are waiting for having some four years so it's four years old and based on the life of the PlayStation 4 I feel like they're going to stick around with this for a good long time you know I would think another four years for the PlayStation 5 based on what the PlayStation you know four had done um so it's definitely I think it's midcycle always hard to predict that stuff but you know do you wait I mean the console updates like like these don't tend to come uh every year or every two years and you know I think it depends on how hungry you were to if you were waiting around to get a console uh and you say okay now I want that graphics upgrade and can pay for it but I don't think there's any sleep lost if you're a PlayStation 5 owner and uh you see this update because I think that you know Sony has a lot of longevity with its consoles and I'm I'm I just played PS5 you know yesterday and you know I think it looks great so um you know for a lot of people that's that's perfectly plenty and if let's say someone doesn't have a PS5 um and as interested in maybe the PS5 Pro would you say that it'd be uh even good with an older TV or do am I going to have to buy a whole entire new um TV uh for this console I think this is a console designed for really fancy TV you know the way I interpreted all the demos that I saw we were looking at the advant es specifically of 4K 60 frames per second gaming so first of all you a 4K TV for that you probably want a really good one with a big you know expansive view really crisp HDR stuff that you know that make the most of what you're looking at and then there are advances uh aimed at 120 frame per second capable TVs and even variable refresh rate TVs you know so I I think if you did own a super nice TV uh you would be tempted by something like this if you had the budget but you know I don't I don't play on great TVs at home unfortunately it's kind of embarrassing but true I mean they're fine but like you know I don't think I would even really be able to fully appreciate this on some of my TVs so I hope that helps I think it's a real avici Autos uh upgrade yeah totally um and um I have some questions also about the games that's a big thing GTA 6 Wolverine um people want to know when they might see PS5 Pro ready games bloodborne bloodborne I mean these are all good questions uh what I was told uh when I talked to uh to CER was that it should be about 40 to 50 games as he also said in the live stream today by launch on November 7th um as far as what those updates will be um it sounds like a lot of them are those 60 frame per second uh 4K performance with also potentially laer list of other things optional 8K gaming or more r racing but we don't know the list of games I mean the games I do know based on the ones that I got to play were and make sure I got them right because I just want to make sure I remember but um played Horizon forbidden West I played Gran Turismo 7 uh f124 Last of Us Part Two remastered Spider-Man 2 rat and Clank Rift apart Final Fantasy 7 rebirth so we know about those I mean a lot of those are probably pretty obvious picks but there are a lot of other ones we don't know about I mean you could imagine that GT 6 is going to get a PS5 Pro update um but you know the updates are going to have to be done in a game by game basis so um you know bloodborne's interesting question you know and it sounds like there are a couple different modes to take advantage of including the uh the upscaling the pssr mode um so you know whether games choose go for that update or go for the 4K 60 Fram per second one or some else we're GNA have to see who knows how long we're gonna have to wait for some of those games it feels like it's been waiting for quite some time um and now we're gonna go in and now every single like video comment I get on anything gaming that we post I feel like they're always like we get it before GTA 6 like that's that's one of the biggest ones um and take some questions um our different um platforms people keep sending in questions for Scott um sorry that I am going to be I have all your questions right here um so uh we have some from Ellen degenerate on Tik Tok uh does my installed SSD that I had to open up my PS5 to install transfer over to the pro yeah it should you know again you know considering some of the things that I thought I do uh the first visit and clarifications seem to shifted a tiny bit in what I thought I knew um I I would hold all expectations on that until we do a review to be certain but it certainly looks like that um and the SSD type is the same terabyte on board so the PS5 Pro is digital console Focus you know they don't include an optical drive you could add one on for 80 bucks frustrating they didn't include it for sure but then you know that's you know you're G to be spending for this console is basically what what's going on here um so yeah that's you know the best I can do we're trying to figure out some of these things too but sounds like it sounds like you should be fine and uh the Ellen degenerate also had another question about um which you can clarify because um is there a dis and digital version of the pro no just this digital version which uh is is unusual except if you think about it the the the slim PS5 is really just one version which either includes the optical drive or doesn't it's a they went with the Snap-on modular concept so here they're just not bundling uh one of these with the optical drive which again I heard from a lot of people this morning understandably $700 and you don't get the optical drive and you don't get the stand what's going on um you know there's a lot of things like you know it kind of reminds me of the uh you know Apple packaging and iPad Pro just with the iPad and you know without like a case or something um you know I think it's clearly like just doesn't include it some people I think who were used to downloading a lot of games if you install a large drive you may not miss the optical drive but it's a bummer yeah that's definitely one of the biggest um comments is everyone's like $700 in no disc which totally valid um and also another question would be from um Ellen degenerate is will his P his or her PS VR2 get any upgrades if he he or she plays it on the pro instead of the Bas PS5 that is a very good question I asked I asked ninan and and C about that it does sound like there are going to be um resolution upgrades for PlayStation VR2 which I would expect but there weren't really a lot of promises there on on that front beyond that you know I think it sounds like that pssr um upscaling is going to get tuned according to cery for uh psvr2 which is great news because with that upgraded Graphics you would expect that you know I'm still waiting for psvr 1 Classics to make it aboard I actually mentioned that to them didn't get much of a response there but you know astrobot rescue mission is an amazing game astrobot just came out like take some of those classic psvr games bring them over as well um you know I'm I'm waiting for a lot of the library so I hope that answers the question I certainly expect some Advantage for for a beier GPU okay and now some questions from Instagram as well um Andy Drew wanted to know if will the will the PS5 Pro use the same panels as the slim yes no it doesn't and uh those big um those black you know they're not B that big but those black vents um mean that it's a different system and it's unclear whether there will be any you know replaceable panels for that or how that might work or whether we're just kind of looking at what you're going to get for this it wasn't mentioned um as far as any extra customizability um could happen but um it won't work with the ones that you already have gotcha gotcha so like the the vents The Ridges um we compared them to uh Ruffles potato chips ridges um do they have any we were thinking about that earlier um but do does it exactly does it have any function or is it you know to help you know make it not overheat do they have any kind of function than that or just that do you know so certainly like venting you know I didn't specifically ask them that because it looked like vents to me and I should also note you know there were a lot of restrictions in some ways about my demos with this you know to be clear one room had the uh the model of the PS5 Pro that I got to look at when I played Demos in the other room uh the PS5 Pro wasn't visible as you can see in the video um was probably pre-production hardware and um so you know I didn't get to hold my hands in front of it and find out you know I'm gonna get the benefit of the doubt to say yes that's you know that's going to be the hardware that's coming out in November but um yeah I couldn't tell if anything was happening there with that I assume so because if you have a beefier GPU with with faster RAM and you know it's pushing pushing more uh polygons then yeah it's going to run warmer of course and of course what some of the mo the most comments that we're getting on social is also about the price of the PS5 Pro and um obviously very high at $700 um so we have a question from on Instagram Von Anthony uh wants to know if the regular PS5 price will go down after the pro comes out it doesn't look like it Sony would have said that by now um and and you know when they announced the price last year that being said there are holiday sales all the time and for a year old piece of Hardware game bundles things like that yeah you probably will be able to get the PS5 or some version of the PS5 for Less uh that that's almost a a given thing every holiday season and I don't think you're going to be seeing any big discounts on the PS5 Pro so that could create an even bigger Gap there and $700 is a lot of money I mean to me that's like very tough to consider upgrading to if you have a PS5 but Sony acknowledged that a lot of its customers for these midcycle upgrades are new customers so you know are you coming from a PC and you decided that you want to get the most pc- like thing I think there's a lot of PC influence in the design and maybe even the pricing of what the PS5 Pro you know is all about and and that was another thought on that we seem to get from um viewers on our videos is that if the PS5 Pro is $700 feel maybe it's just they should just get a PC do you have any thoughts on like maybe how different the why why the PS5 Pro over a PC why not you know obviously they have different values in gaming yeah I mean maybe maybe you could get a PC I think there's a lot more overlap in the territory now I mean Sony's games their big PlayStation games are now you know a lot of them are living on PC and a lot of crossplatform games um you know Cy acknowledges too you know that it's pretty standard now that they're crossplatform or thinking crossplatform I think that the difference between those high-end consoles like Xbox and PlayStation and PCs is is really getting narrow um so if you like the idea of um you know continually upgrading graphics on PCs that could be big and you may not miss that much I mean I think this you know what Sony's kind of um emphasizing here is the super fast SSD um you know we'll have to see about the GPU performance because um we didn't get to see that many demos of it but how it feels compared to uh other games um similar games on PC um so yeah I mean I think it's you know some people just want something simpler to set up and I think that they're kind of selling two different markets there too where you just want something optimized and you know specifically branded you don't have to worry about figuring out components yeah totally um another question from YouTube Dan Mass 305 what about 4K 120 frames per second possible without raid tracing yeah so Cy was bringing up that there's like a couple of big things that they're talking about in that video and then they're push for what PS5 Pro is all about and I think this is to create some consistency in the launch lineup and not make it feel too like well piece meal like it's happening Here There and Everywhere but they were talking about like this Pro performance mode which is 4K 60 frames per second they're also talking about this pssr which is the um you know this this AI enabled upscaling for games which is like another option and then R tracing like increasing the amount of R tracing in games uh I only saw a couple of 8K games demoed um one was Gran Turismo 7 and one was was um oh I got to play Ratchet and Clank I think in AK no actually no it was f124 sorry about that um and and I believe that was the case so um uh no actually no I think it was Grant Turismo 7 I apologize about that but playing Grant Turismo 7 let's focus on that because it is a little bit confusing which of these games are at dates I played in 8k mode and then I played in raid tracing mode ra tracing had not been uh in the live gameplay part of gt7 before but you had to pick which one you wanted you know the 4K rate tracing or the 8K mode and so 120 sounds like there may be other modes that do that as well but um they're bring up that there's compatibility with 120 FPS TVs and there's some frame rate benefit uh they were saying when you play games on those TVs that was a little clear too whether that's something where the games are just going to get a little bit of that benefit we were also going to see games with a with a specific 120 mode um and it sounds like you know C was pointing out that there are already games in the in the Hopper that have like three different Pro specific modes um so there you know it could be that you start seeing a lot of different types sprouting up gotcha okay and then also like uh a last question from Ellen degenerate wanted to also know like with all these games that you're getting to try and the different um AK 4K um how did P5 Pro feel to play was it comfortable or like also viewing um what did what were your thoughts yeah so you know the de the demos were very stepping away from the demo it's sorry oh yeah oh no no Noor Dem yeah sorry the demos were were very contained you know a couple of games I got to play on their own on a big screen sitting on a sofa 80 inch and then a lot of the other demos you see in the video were I was looking at two screens side by side or one on top of each other where we bounce back and forth between specifically the 4K 30 frame per second mode um and the 60 frame per second uh 1080p so and then the pro mode which would basically blend those two together and so in all of those demos that I saw I thought it looked great to play 604k you know like it was clearly an advantage although sometimes it was like I had to peer at the vistas and go oh yeah the Vista looks nicer those leaves look little nicer you know and then it's like well how much how much nice is Neary what's your tolerance for that um really fast reaction games I mean Spider-Man to ratch and Clank um just having that super extra super smooth highres just felt really nice that being said again you know I I played on uh performance mode on my own TV and it's looked fantastic so it's like fantastic and then it's like even nicer I feel like for this but that's what I noticed I really loved I mean Grant Turismo 7 not surprisingly would be a showcase I really loved playing um in the AK mode just for the size of the canvas I I I hope I could appreciate it uh R tracing was really beautiful um but you know these are graphic modes like Reflections on the cars you know and these are existing games I really want to see what new games might do in terms of pushing the envelope for this and how easy it will be for Sony to do that and to also go back to Gran Turismo uh we got in a question from Oscar Gonzalez and he was wondering is um about obviously you talking about gr yeah Gran Turismo uh in AK is that something new yeah that's new and uh yeah and so that and playing F1 which yeah did have an AK mode I kept thinking about um simulators you know and I asked Sony about this because you know like there was the movie and I thought about like you know Sim racing and like you know is that was that created for that so that you could sit in front of like a 100 inch screen and and do like a you know racing simulator situation it didn't seem like that specifically but I could see that being a big appeal of why you'd want a racing game in 8k um for places where that is actually set up for that purpose I mean I I think there's a limit in how I certainly they admitted too that like about one in 10 PlayStation owners right now have at 8K capable displays so oh no sorry I think it was less than that actually um so it was uh I'm going to check my stats on that but um it was a very small subset and the point being that it's not um uh it's not actually like a big emphasis because it's a small subset if that helps the the the the variable refresh rate and the 120 were a bigger Focus for sure gotcha and um um a a question we got from X Twitter um from Jeremy e Simpson he want um they wanted to know why isn't all software backwards compatible I'm actually looking at that stat too in my own story because I'm making sure but why isn't all software backwards compatible you mean in terms of like forwards comp like I'm I'm curious about like I assume you mean like forwards compatibility into the PS5 Pro um so well because the PS the PS5 Pro will play you know the PlayStation Library uh PS5 Library as it exists what I originally thought and I corrected this in my story was that the PlayStation super spectral resolution mode would automatically update to AI enhance all the games in your library we addressed that we talked about you actually do need a game patch for that that's a big question for me in terms of you know how many games does that mean that games will have to choose to get that patch to upgrade what happens to the rest of the games in the library do that ispl as normal so I'm really curious about that too obviously you're depending on games to upgrade you're going to be waiting you know potentially to you know you won't know if a game that you really want takes advantage of of the pro um or or how it'll take advantage of the pro May Lo it may load faster but you know like that's so I I want to know that too and um assuming that's what you meant um you know I I I'm I'm trying to learn about this as well it's a moving Target like I I I would say like it's it's a lot of big question marks for me coming out of the the announcement in the Demos in terms of how games really will be optimized for this yeah and you can clarify like the the amount of time you actually got with this demo was what one to two hours like we want to clarify it was contained it was not very extensive obviously uh this PS5 Pro was just announced yeah and by the way I want to do as soon as possible we're talking about the PlayStation 5 Pro in case you're just joining and I mentioned the statistic is one in 10 have a variable refresh rate capable TV not AK so that I I want to completely address that and say that that's you know so that's like a TV that could go you know a variety of refresh rates including 120 um 8K we don't even know how many people have those but um we were addressing we were just talking about uh what we talking about Tera sorry about that I want to make sure that we got to talk about that the game demo times yeah it wasn't a tremendous long time it was about 45 minutes for the first set of demos and then we got to come back and play some more for about another hour or so so it's definitely it was a nice chance to look at things but I'd say for each game we got a little bit of a chance to move around uh do some things for a couple of minutes then we hoop to another game we played around for a couple of minutes you know we're also hopping between two different versions so it was it was really like a live demonstration of some of those things I didn't I didn't get to like play a ton I did get to play Ratchet and Clank and Gran Turismo 7 more so I to spend you know maybe 10 minutes each with those to kind of like spend a little time going through the intros to those or going through tracks we have some more um questions coming in from YouTube so many questions thank you guys all for all the questions apologies for not looking at the camera I am trying to reiterate them to Scott um so for anyone just joining thank you bear with me um so a question from YouTube uh Gamers at tuugo go um what's the equivalent GPU for the PS5 Pro that's a really good question and I'm kind of dying to know that myself I mean the way Sony described it was 67% more processing cores um 28% faster G faster Ram 45% faster uh rendering speed we don't know a whole bunch more beyond that and there are a lot of gpus out there the uh the the architecture for the uh rate tracing uh they're they're using um protocols from am they're working with AMD on that and the one thing they mention was that the AMD rate tracing technology that's on the PS5 Pro is not on current AMD gpus right now but you know how does that compare to Nvidia so I think this is these are excellent questions and you know without anything else to compare to in a set of fixed demos um you know I don't know the answer to that but I think it's important and I think we're I mean that's the value of of being able to test these in the future on some big screen TVs and look at games playing on PCS I think people are going to have a lot of questions about that for sure and Frostbite Slash from YouTube also wanted to know if there are any CPU upgrades um uh apparently initially rumors were indicating 10% clocking boost yeah so no change in the CPU which you know is a little surprising considering it's uh it's four years later hard to believe it's four years later but you know pandemic acceleration but the uh yeah no change in the CPU and no change to SSD speeds which already they are they are fast ssds I mean you know I agree with that but um yeah this is a GPU upgrade basically that you're getting here um as you're paying for gotta and um another question um in regarding like two different consoles um and power uh from Instagram AAC ee EO sorry um I don't want to Bri myself trying to um say that is wanted to know is the PS5 Pro more powerful than the Xbox series X if you feel like you can compare I would assume it would be um you know I think that how much more powerful see things seem uh remains to be seen you know the PS5 was already pretty powerful Hardware could do some amazing things now you got a faster GPU and and it can do improve rendering speeds it can do more rate tracing yeah I mean I would say it would be more powerful than the Xbox series X for sure but you know does the uh does the Xbox console have some competitive advantages that we don't know about yet you know stay tuned you know I I think it's it's hard with like a black box so to speak where you're you're playing games in a demo like that and you're asking some questions and trying to sus things out um so you know we didn't get any uh deeper Dives than that technically and um Jason De Carlo from YouTube also asked if you think this um when uh the PS5 Pro comes out do you think there'll be any types of bundles good question I mean it's totally possible right now it is it has not been mentioned uh it would be nice to have a bundle for sure because the price is super high and uh without any of those extras and uh you know it does have Astros playroom in there but you know know what about other games that you know are coming out or the new astrobot or whatever else you know could be could be out to take advantage of this um not impossible because we're still quite a bit away from November 7th yeah this is very early I'm sure we're going to talk way more about PS5 Pro once um we get to test it out um more extensively or Scott does um but an overall question that we have to just to like wrap this up because um uh we're going to wrap up this live um we oh who is the PlayStation 5 Pro 4 like overall who would you say uh they're gearing this um new console out um who would you recommend it to um yeah overall good question and I think like this stands to like again the life cycle of consoles and what people are playing I mean I kept thinking not only do a lot of people I think are still perfectly happy with their ps5s a lot of people are perfectly happy with their PlayStation 4s and I was saying that in the story that you know and people play switches with like really old graphics on board and they play on phones they do all sorts of things so you know the PlayStation 5 compared to a lot of Hardware out there is already still great and I think that the pro is setting itself up right now to be really about like it's looking like some performance improvements and tweaks for people who want the bleeding edge and people who have the TV to show it off and maybe for people that were envious of some of the um the latest PC gaming upgrades and felt like they wanted that equivalent but not get a PC get a console um you know I think that writing it out through the next few years with that you're probably going to be most likely to get uh games that feel graphic equivalent for PCs are heading and it does sound like Sony's pretty confident that developers are going to find that porting games over with extra Graphics modes is going to be a lot easier than PlayStation 4 Pro way back um you know but again we have to wait and see I mean I'm always going to be skeptical because you know PlayStation VR2 totally different Beast that you know promised a lot and a lot of games that I even expected that were PC VR games have not made it over to the PlayStation VR2 so you know are you going to find a situation like that where you expected a game to come and it didn't come and then you feel frustrated um I don't know but I'd say that it's it's really like if you have the money and you want to you know get the bleeding edge and get yourself there but I'd want to know a lot more about the specific upgrades coming to more games and how deep and Rich they're going to be right now it's more about a few specific improvements and it sounded like almost soft selling the GPU power um to me you know as as far as thinking about the potential we'll have to well it'll be quite a bit until we can um hope have some of those questions answered um until we get more time with and so you know thanks for bearing with me games yeah come out um we're just going to wrap up this live we appreciate all your questions thank you for bearing with all of us um on this obviously it was just announced and Scott just had his chance to um demo the PS5 Pro um if you haven't checked out um Scott's full Hands-On video it's up on YouTube and we have um videos out on Tik Tok Instagram Twitter follow us all um but yeah thanks so much for joining us we'll answer more questions for Scott um later on and we'll see you on the next time [Music]