Overview hey everyone well here it is a DFX special on PlayStation 5 Pro it's real it's official Mark cley has told us all about it in a pretty Compact 9 Minute presentation um there's a lot to talk about though there's been um accompanying uh articles from CNET and a video which we'll talk about later there's also been additional detail on the Playstation blog plenty of discussion points to Wade through supporter questions to answer and uh yeah basically dealing with a lot of outrage about the price joining me on the panel first of all Alex battalia hello oh yeah I'm feeling professional this evening I hope you jents are as well too absolutely John linan hi Rich I canceled my order for the Apple Mac wheels so I can afford the PS5 Pro excellent you should have some money left over enough to stand perhaps but not the optical drive no no no not that but before we go on my Gambit paid off I said in DF direct weekly this week that uh I reckoned it wouldn't ship with a disc drive and there'd be a run on the disc drives as soon as the pro was announced I emerged triumphant as you can see in the background there uh although some might say that Sony is the only real winner there um let's let's talk about the first discussion Point okay first discussion Point how is Sony going to be marketing How is Sony marketing the PS5 Pro? the PlayStation 5 Pro and um I actually wrote an article for Euro gamer which uh essentially laid out my ideas which was that first of all you start by uh saying how great the PlayStation 5 is the base unit um that's your good and then you start talking about PlayStation 5 Pro which is the better you know good and better it's kind of like standard Consumer Electronic stuff really and that's exactly what they did um Alex I think the main point the main thrust that Mark Cy was talking about in the presentation there was a that what is it three qus of PlayStation 5 players are using the performance modes and yet the quality modes that are typically pegged to 30 FPS are look a lot better so why not have the best of both worlds is is that kind of your take on it and do you think that's a compelling sale for the console oh wow um I would say that was how it was thrusted forward in uh it was the exact line of reasoning essentially given by Mark Sunni and I do think the the fact that 34s of players on Playstation are using they didn't mention which titles but I presume just uh the Sony titles um that they that have Telemetry of the whole thing yeah yeah um so I mean that's that's awesome uh but uh you know I think it's like halfway there as the way to advertise it towards people um for a variety of reasons mainly because it it does ignore a little bit the the you know I'd say the transformative aspect of things like pssr and I think it ignores a little bit the transformative aspects of Ray tracing right um because uh the PS5 would not necessarily be have been utilizing uh really great rate tracing for example uh even in its quality modes in every game while maybe the PS5 Pro does allow a game to run with more transformative rate tracing to a certain degree so I I think it's like halfway there I also think it's only halfway there because it's not necessarily uh going to be true of all situations which is something that Mark cery talked about at the end of the videos like uh he said uh the the way this could be used is going to be as varied as all the different engines out there almost and I think that that will bear out when we look at the games we're going to see probably much like we saw with Xbox one uh X for example or PS4 Pro a variety of different ways that people will leverage that extra GPU power and some games won't be able to do um the we take your Fidelity mode and turn it into a performance mode but they'll maybe do something else um which has other benefits so I think I think it's only like halfway there I would have maybe chosen different examples uh than were chosen for the video uh which we can all talk about but I think there this the seven minutes that he had because there was first setting up that PS5 is great thing the seven minutes that he had was it was so rushed and so like I W I wanted to know a lot more than what was what was said actually okay John what have you got to add to that I mean I I'm continuing right there I was also left wanting it did not feel like the traditional Cy presentation we get um it very high level you're right and that's a little bit surprising to me because I feel like the people that are going to be spending this amount of money which we'll get to are probably very interested in those details right this isn't necessarily a mass Market product in the same way certainly not no no so I'm a little surprised they went with this format um but I did one of the things that stuck out from the initial part of the video though when talking about quality in performance modes is how he very specifically called 30fps choppy or not smooth and I thought that was interesting that's the first time I can recall somebody at that level referring to the frame rate at 30fps is not being smooth which is just it's just an interesting thing an observation if you will that that was that that was uttered and I do like this data that it turns out that most players are playing at 60fps Targets yeah um so that's really cool but yeah like like you said Alex I feel like some of the examples select uh both through issues with YouTube itself and just the way that they showed the games like I feel like this almost kind of highlights like how do you show this to people because you're just showing full screen footage running uh it's really hard to pinpoint what's even different from a YouTube feed especially right like you can't really appreciate any of the actual benefits here and I don't think the video did a good job selling that stuff not at all I mean John do you remember PS4 Pro and uh this the live stream of the PlayStation meeting 2016 and it was talking about 4K resolution and HDR and the stream just did nothing to actually showcase uh any of those features it was 1080p stream possibly 30 I can't remember yeah and it was a bit of a disaster and so you know I'm looking at the you know I had this uh PS5 Pro stream running at full screen on my 48 in OLED the best quality I possibly get and you know the the stream quality was awful yep you could barely tell the difference in any of the comparisons it was a spectacular own goal and a sact rerun of 2016 there and what can I say I think you know you've got to put your F your best foot forward in terms of your initial presentation I think they could have done a lot better on that regard dare I say they should have been inspired by the work of digital Foundry because people always say why why do you guys pause why do you zoom in well part of the reason is that YouTube actually cannot handle this stuff right and also people watching a variety of devices often not even on for screen right 50% on uh on mobile phones which is why we do that exactly so people cannot you cannot see it physically on devices like that and the YouTube stream makes it worse this is not how you show these differences to people and they were not able to do that and so just to the average person watching they're going to see nothing no differences at all it's just not really feasible to see it here and so like I feel like right there the presentation just didn't work and terms of actually showing what is possible because we already kind of know on paper based on stuff that we already knew as well as what's talked about here that things like pssr for instance should actually show a pretty significant difference when used well right yeah we're kind of assuming because um still we still don't know how good it is based on I mean rich though if you had to G if you had to put place a wager would you say it's going to look better than FSR 2 on a console well that's that goes without question that's the whole if it didn't then what are we doing so that's what I'm saying so it's at least going to look better than that yeah I mean if they get to xcss level that would be great if they get to dlss level then you know that's I would I would say that's a pretty remarkable accomplishment um actually I think you know I think the message the marketing message was actually quite sound it was basically you know you love performance modes here it is without compromise so you know that was a key part of the marketing message that I think was actually a pretty good way to kick everything off um but let's move on to the real quick rich I want to pop in on that because it actually raises a very interesting point because where did performance modes really come from the PS4 Pro that's when we started to see them in the console space and so now we're sort of flipping things around and the PS5 Pro is seeking to do the opposite right like that seems to be the goal here right is to like sweep them back under the carpet and get rid of that distinction which is the complete opposite from the PS4 Pro so I think that I thought that was actually kind of interesting um well let's move on second Big three features: larger GPU, machine learning and ray tracing enhancements Point let's talk about I guess they called them the big three The Big Three enhancements the bigger GPU machine learning and raid facing uh you sorry what was that John you talking about the big three and thought you're talking about us the the panel on this podcast but the the only big three that I'm uh sort of cognizant is virtue Fighter 2 virtual cop and Sega Valley all right I'm on board with that big for Sega Valley for for Sega back in the day we can't we can't match up to that yeah that was the epoch making big three but the big three the big three for Sony this time is um pssr or pissa as you like to we're going to keep that racing and the bigger GPU uh interesting that um 60 compute units versus 36 but only 45% of extra GPU power um you 67% more compute units for 45% more uh performance I guess that kind of makes sense in a world where your memory bandwidth could only goes so far and where typically efficiencies sort of drop it's also interesting that um and this was pointed out to me by Duo um on Twitter I think where um the road to PlayStation 5 Mark Cy talked about um uh fewer compute units running faster so kind of narrow but fast and um but this time around PS5 Pro is essentially wide but the same speed uh right in terms of yes it's an interesting uh sort of Distinction as the things have changed clearly because of the uh of the opportunities that were actually available to make a PO console um we are here interesting things about a boost mode presumably and you would expect that that 45% of um extra GPU power goes towards like unenhanced PlayStation uh five games um which should just naturally run faster um Alex rate racing we've got to talk about it they did emphasize the additional rate racing power they did suggest that it's an AMD technology uh coming from I guess rdna A4 and um I think in the Senor article Mark CI was basically saying that Sony were pushing for this um we've I think we've talks about it in a prior DF weekly there have been leaks of what we could expect from rdna for RT but it's still quite unclear as to you know how it's going to measure up against say you know Nvidia Solutions right yeah it's still just as unclear after this um the uh I think it could have been a bit better communicated what that maybe means with different examples right um because we've already seen uh Ray tracing in Grand Turismo 7 it was just limited to photo mode yeah right we already saw that and we also already saw Ray tracing didn't we already also see Ray tracing in Hogwarts am I mistaken it did have an RT mode yes yep yeah so I feel like they could have shown an example of based upon a new game doing something different right maybe they just want to save that up for a different showcase that is coming in the future but I feel like that would have sold off the the RT difference that it could be versus you know whatever the standard PlayStation is or just the standard console experience uh so yeah that um there was the direct reference to two to can trace Rays at two to three times the speed as of PlayStation 5 well once again I'm still wondering exactly what that is referencing because it's got like just about double the compute units and well 60 versus 72 which would be double but yeah I think this is the point I think I get what you're saying which is that obviously there's going to be extra RT Hardware per compute unit so it's not it's not all architectural increases it's also just sheer Brute Force for more compute right yeah that's what I'm so I'm like wondering exactly what is it what is it being attributed back to in the hardware because we you know I think that one leak about the variety of things that are done uh spent some more time and talked to someone behind the scenes about it like some of them are about like testing triangles better and getting more results kind of for the same amount of stuff being raised being shot out and you know I think it describes mainly smaller additions to the kind of rdna and not something so nearly as transformative actually as what we saw uh with touring or I guess Intel back in the day so I'm still really I really just want to know more I just don't know nearly enough and I would have once again chosen different examples it's really cool to see gt7 with r tracing and gameplay I think that's going to be great for people that love that game uh but we already saw that on PS5 to a certain degree so I wanted to see something new um but that was lacking I think they just don't have any examples yet because like they were most outside of like Hogwarts they were mostly focused on just first party titles and I don't think they have anything like unannounced and ready to show where does even make sense you know what I mean like they're probably just not there it I'm actually surprised still they didn't reveal any new games at all but I guess it's hopefully coming soon there are rumors of a state of play qu unquote dropping next week or the week after or whatever I will say though that uh showing gt7 that that is a night gt7 race tracing features were pretty highend like the reflection quality was way uh higher than what we typically see in R traced games on the PS5 it it also I hope it if it retains the exact same characteristics because it has a very very uh like very rough surfaces show Reflections in gt7 which is something that usually the roughness cut off usually gets adjusted for consoles right and they allowed extremely rough materials to reflect and if that's actually in the game it's pretty cool uh but you're right the other examples like they showed hogwart's footage where they were talking about it it was still running at 30 frames per second which I thought was interesting given uh what they were just saying about that earlier yes you know it's not great is it yeah the reflections I mean this is an unreal thing but the thing is the reflections were grainy in the Hogwarts footage and I know Unreal Engine 4's RT reflection support was it was nent and it could have been done better um but extremely heavy yeah it was also very heavy um but you know like like I could see the grain over the footage at the bad Youtube footage and I was just wondering like like is it still like quarter res or something like that I was you know just like wondering all these things but I I can't really know until I have the game in much higher quality in front of me to even say like what this upgrade really is yeah yeah um machine learning based upscaling uh what could what could we say about that we didn't really have any chance to get a decent look at it did we no potentially transformative uh if we're talking about you know some sort of xss style dlss I mean here's the thing right I think it is potentially awesome right because um uh especially when you're using a 4K TV the you know the amount of actual base resolution you need to get a presentable image on screen is actually surprisingly low I mean 1080p works just fine and you know even some of these PlayStation 5 games that go down to to like 640p or whatever uh put that through a machine learning based upscale and even that would look great so even before you've got the extra GPU horsepower there's there's you know there's a lot to you a lot of potential here in terms of actually dramatically increasing the quality or you know being able to use the GPU time available uh freed up by the machine learning pass just to do more things more Raad facing for example and I think there's also been there was a CNET um article there and that talked about an 8K mode for granar Riso which uh well let's let's just say our 8K capture cards are ready and waiting for this that's funny though because that that actually does fit in with what car and them love to do a pany right absolutely they were like the one of the first if not the first like 1080p thing well they were there with rcer 7 I guess but they had the GT uh what was it called it was the GT thing for PS the pro whatever you know the one the demo at launch yeah yeah yeah the demo that was 1080p so they were all and they they had that 1080i mode and GT4 on PS 2 so like it does not surprise me one bit that they would be talking about that but still 8K yeah I'm glad that they didn't actually emphasize AK or even mention AK at all in the initial presentation it was kind of like a bonus nice to have thing that they included in this in the CNet presentation uh the CNet presentation utterly bizarre the video was 1080p30 actually see anything how how does this stuff happen right like you give something like that to an outlet and then they don't seem to get even the basics of video encoding and like quality I don't even know they obviously didn't record 10830 they obviously didn't I mean like what are they even doing why would they why would you upload at 1080p30 and anymore the quality is terrible on YouTube especially for something like this it doesn't make sense hasht true facts there anything more we got to say about the big three uh before we move on about pisser um I really so for example they they very specifically other than when highlighting things added to third party games so they did highlight Hogwarts right and they showed what it is doing different ly but they didn't show a comparison versus what it previously was and I think they're doing that because they kind of don't want to say like oh your multiplatform title doesn't look good enough on PS5 or they just want to leave it to their own library of titles these examples that and that was so I think like them showing off games that already look kind of okay is yeah right like I don't think many people were super complaining about the image quality in The Last of Us Part two's performance mode Sony's games in general have good image quality yeah they take care to do that usually and um but if they did for example they have alen wake 2 as a listed title and if that is using pssr and is probably now targeting 4K which I imagine it is should be transformative if they show that just the camera pan with motion blur off in the forest or in the town vers or even the character's head or anything like that versus what presumably is good piss or quality well then you know how this wouldn't I like if I was doing a video on a PC version of a game and I wanted to show dlss looking better than epsr 2 in for something I would always really show it off you know like you can really easily showed off so I think them being limited to these PS titles as actually that's not going to be the transformative thing necessarily I think it could be third party titles right so that that was my big thing Alex is like it felt it felt like what they were really needed to show here was some of these Unreal Engine five titles we've seen all these u5 titles coming out with this absurdly low input resolutions like really like sub 720p in cases using FSR 2 and the result is bad it's really bad and this would have been a chance to like really showcase like look how much better this looks but Sony doesn't actually have anything like that in their first party stable no no unfortunately I mean it's good but also for this case it's not useful because their image quality is fine it's the third party stuff that's really really really struggling right now right I don't think we're going to see head-to heads uh from Sony because we'll produce them well we'll produce them sure but the point is that I think they they actually Sid stepped it quite nicely by saying yeah what you're getting at 30 FPS on the base PS5 we can do it 60 on the pro um that's kind of like you know it's you can still have that stuff if you want on the on the base unit but it's going to be quote unquote choppy um so yeah but you're quite right the third party titles anything that's using FSR 2 if it gets a pssr uh refit so to speak it should be pretty good uh just to sort of go back on some of the details that have come from the developer portal um previously gaining new features uh for old games required updating the SDK uh which is quite problematic and actually is um very difficult for developers to actually you know make their games compatible with new sdks um pssr can actually be retrofitted to games running on the older SDK so potentially you know gamechanging um image quality changes improvements should be seen there on a range of games um that doesn't require a huge amount of of um developer input which which is potentially a great thing one would imagine that the inputs required for pssr will be the same or very very similar to FSR 2 so it should be you know pretty pretty decent and easy to do upgrade for a lot of games and that's probably going to be quite transformative and if they're using DRS as well Dynamic resolution scaling then more GPU power means they're probably going to be reaching upper bounds on that or close to it so you know this is essentially really really exciting stuff um is is there anything more that we need to talk about before we start talking about the things that are less impressive like price um I mean I think that's it okay yeah I think that hits It's it it looks promising uh but it wasn't necessarily shown off as well as it could have been as like kind of think to takeaway here yeah I think so I think you know it we just need to get some good trailers out there that actually show show the difference where somebody's putting in effort to show the difference but the question is whether Sony actually wants that from from their perspective it's uh it's it's kind of weird um like okay let's move on to our next topic and it's The missing disc drive not price okay I really wanted to talk about the reveal at the end obviously we've got the price obviously there's things that are not exactly great about that price but I think compounding the issue and I want to talk about this first of all is the lack of an optical drive um John you've talked about that in a prior direct we've got got issues with this let's talk about first of all the just the concepts that you've got a pro level machine that is lacking features that the standard model that's $200 cheaper has I think is bit of an issue you know yeah why would you be removing features from a pro model I guess on the plus side you are getting a 2 tbte SSD which is great I mean you would expect um to have more storage um but yes the the the optical device situation this is problematic on a number of levels because you would expect also the pro model to be uh targeting the most dedicated PlayStation Gamers who will almost certainly surely have a dis Library going back to the PS4 reer exactly and frankly the price is already so high that and it's targeting enthusiasts anyway you may as well do a skew with the disc drive included out of the box and maybe offer it at a slight lower price than buying them separately I don't think well let's let's make things uh pretty clear here it's going to be a niche device at whether it's 600 or $700 so I think there's only really um the opportunity to do one skew fair enough then in that case you're right I would drive it should have the the gosh darn Drive In The Box and I feel like this is really this is this is not good it's a very negative thing um both in terms of the added cost and hassle that everyone's going to have to deal with if they want the drive but two it further sort of starts to spell the end for is this the last PlayStation that does Optical media dis drives at all like there's a certain point where it's like if these consoles come out with no dis support for me it's like I don't even see the purpose in owning these things anymore right we've got this comment here from uh supporter 10 Bes spokes in a trench coat hey DF team exclamation point concerning the fact that the pro model does not come with a disc drive and needs the disc drive to connect to their servers before activation it really concerns me for the future game preservation this is the first time at least in my recent memory that a flagship model of a console does not include or have a method of physical playback physical media playback rather out of the box do you think they are fully preparing for going all digital with a ps6 at this rate a kagin I may be but I would still rather own my media in some form are my fear is misplaced hope you had a great week excavation boy cheers I mean that pretty much sums it up doesn't it yeah I mean yes I think uh his fears are not misplaced I I the one thing you know let's say actually no it's not a good thing um you can actually it has been confirmed I think again in the CNet article that you can move your optical drive from a PS5 slim to the pro but if you've just bought a PS5 Slim then you know that's I'd say that you're probably not the target user for the PS5 Pro you'd have likely have bought the machine at launch um so I guess that's a good thing in one sense but not great in another but yes I mean the activation thing which I think we ascertained uh is some sort of requirement um for blu-ray drives yeah yeah due to movie industry I believe it basically means that um the machine can't be used with physical media um in the far-flung future when those servers are likely not going to be operating any further better hang on to that original PS5 in that case W exactly I mean this basically it was the already the case with the slim but the slim and now the pro are basically like the Xbox series X and that they effectively need to be activated right to even be used you can't just pull it out of the box and use it anymore and so we're crossing that bridge I guess yes I mean plenty of devices have as well but uh it's not a good bridge to cross I would say because you cannot count on these Services being around forever and there are issues sometimes that crop up with this stuff it's bad for the Future these machines yeah I guess at least there is an option to actually have an optical drive on there if we don't like it but there is a point that people always raise though but John PC games are all digital for years right and and again the point about PC is that it's an open platform there are ways around that a lot of games are all even sold in DRM free and even if they're not again there's ways around it the PC is that's what the PC is all about uh the PC is where digital preservation actually happens um on a closed platform though all digital closed platform you lose all control you lose control over pricing uh the ability to like even resell games if you want I mean there's just so many negatives to being purely digital in a closed platform space that it really really really is not I can see why they would want to do it but it's not where a lot of users of these want to go I immediately was bombarded with messages from friends and others after this about some of these exact issues so like people are the hardcore people that are into this stuff that want to collect the games and actually own them uh they're not too happy about where we're heading here yeah it's certainly not great any Alex anything to add to that well I mean yeah I think John emphasizing the difference in the ecosystem here is important and I also feel like um people use the phrase upsell with a lot of things but um if you're trying to like this is already the price we'll talk about the price in a second but this is already appealing to a Nisha audience of people who probably already have a PS5 so they're probably going to want to get the full kit and I feel like it not including it as a part of the base cost as well as the kind of like hyperinflated cost of the disc drive which is probably manyfold the the actual cost of the manufacturing the dis drive whatever um it's mainly like it's it's kind of going to make it even more expensive and put the you know I think it's just a way of getting more extracted value uh from the dedicated user in in in a way that I'm also not very happy about um obviously I have my own concerns about digital preservation as well too so uh but yeah I think it almost does point out the fact that ps6 might be diskless because this isn't just you know Flagship model without it's different I think it's problematic when you want your users to come with you from one generation to the next if you're basically going to stop them being able to access all of the physical discs they've ever bought going back you know at that point it could be anything like a decade or more right gigantic failure on the you know Microsoft have pointed out I think Phil Spencer pointed out um that they've got problems actually sourcing Optical drives these days at a decent price because they're not really made any more in in huge volumes I don't think it's as much of a problem for Sony because they do actually make them right the question is whether they're going to continue to make them maybe they move away from from discs entirely I don't know I mean that doesn't solve the backwards compatibility issue but Nintendo has left discs behind right they're very much uh still chasing physical media I don't think that's going to change anytime soon for Nintendo okay let's move on we've got a 700 USD sticker shock: does it make sense? talk price it came up at the end went down like a cuper cold sick $700 700 UK ps8 800 e uh 12 ,000 Yen um vertical stand sold separately don't worry I'm sorted assum assuming it's the same vertical stand as the one for the slim but I suspect it is because ecosystem um let's take some supporter comments here uh tagen 86 why do we see such a large price gap between EU and us this time it's uh 799 here which is exactly twice what I paid for my PS4 Pro back in the day €399 Mackie D says that in Brackets frankly mental price is obviously the immediate talking point as that's a whole lot of money for a mid gem bump it's for most it's for the most enthusiastic of enthusiasts the wealthy and very few others but given the lack of price Cuts this gen anyway are we looking at big price hikes for the genuine next generation of consoles maybe not 800 quid but certainly 600 plus seems on the cards um Mr Birds um um one of my world models in terms of management style says so I so I guess Sony looked at PlayStation 5 selling for €700 Plus for over two years on eBay and figured they could make that official I've been on record for expecting a high price Mr birs has been on the [Laughter] record but €799 without a disc drive wasn't even on my card but is that just a market reality I'm actually inclined to think they will find an audience for it given the first two years of PlayStation 5 I think one of the sort of mitigating factors for that first two years is that we're essentially locked up in our own homes um and needed things to do and were willing to pray pay extreme prices to do those things um so I'm not sure we can sort of look at that as a as a sort of indicator I do think however that um well consumer electronics are going up in price generally um phones are you know thousand Flagship phones a th dollars upwards typically they probably will find an audience for this the question is whether they can actually justify it what's the difference between a PS5 Pro and a PS5 there's going to be a bit of extra memory in there I'd assume the cooling has to be better um and the key price is going to uh you the key increase is obviously going to be the size of the chip um but it you know all the evidence is pointing to an existing relatively cheap process node now so you know I have to admit I was expecting um 599 with a haircut to the price of the base unit doesn't look as though that's happening um John I'm going to go to you first on this one it's it's kind of Staggering isn't it yeah no we're in a weird age because I think there is this man you look at consoles the history of consoles and I think people generally expect them just going of sit within a fairly narrow price window we actually saw that creep up a bit during the uh the HD era you know before that things were typically 300 or less and then obviously you know there was a PS3 situation with 599 but that came down pretty quick and then we right I was just thinking actually cash I and the $599 debacle oh yeah and here we are we are blew the doors off that absolutely but but at the same time like you said like Electronics in general are like becoming extremely expensive like think about when the iPhone was first around and people were bulking at the price but now it's like oh you want the pro model with just like the lower storage it's like 1,500 bucks right Flagship from from other companies same price range people upgrade these things every year GPU prices look where they look where they're at compared to where they used to be like the days of the 1080 are long gone and even that you know that was good enough for the time but even that felt expensive You could argue uh but now like GPU prices are like way higher like everything is much higher and based on what Microsoft told us back when we saw the series X and Series S reveal it's like just the cost of things at this point like it it all makes sense why the price is so high it's just that in this space it's traditionally stayed within sort sort of a price ceiling and every time they've tried to push out of that ceiling it's been met with negativity right uh it seems more shocking than in other product categories and I think that's why the the sticker shock is there but it's I feel like the US price is just like borderline okay somehow but man when you look at that Euro price or the Japanese price it's just like when it's like okay if you want to get a PS5 Pro in Europe with the disc drive uh you're looking at like 920 so that's that's a lot man that is a lot that is that is a huge jump that's that's is way way way beyond what we've seen in the console space and I kind of wonder if this is kind of where we're heading in the future like do you foresee a $1,000 Xbox for instance nextg maybe maybe they'll be other options maybe this is just where we're landing and instead of this is like this the opposite of the series S series X where we now have the the base like sort of a baseline within an upper tier I don't know I I don't know man we're just in a weird spot right now with plac I was just uh reading the some more suppored questions on the patreon Paul Calamar says I hear all these people out here saying the PS5 Pro is expensive at $700 but Chad Warden wipes his ass with $700 are all these people BR it's the PS5 Pro pushing the limits of what's acceptable for console pricing it's pushing the limits for sure and I'm going to be really interested to see I mean every every time somebody predicts Doom for a new piece of consumer electronics they kind of forget that they're initially available in limited quantities and always sell out uh so I'm I'm I'm fully aware at this point that I think that the PS5 Pro is is going to sell out Simply you know because there'll be limed numbers laun but it's certainly going to be um a test I think and um yeah that's that's fascinating it's uh it's it's it's not great though I think that $600 would have been a lot more palatable I think for $700 I'm disappointed at the quality of the presentation I think they could have done a whole lot more uh with that man that that's that's kind of crazy um yeah but you know we are seeing things like more expensive gpus I guess my question is this kind of pricing if it does move on to like ps6 I can't surely not but um because you know the whole point of a console is a cheap subsidized mainstream box I don't think there's any level of subsidy going into the PS5 pro at this price point no if they're breaking even with a with a five at $500 I don't see $200 of additional costs in the Pro I think it's there's probably you know making some money on that even at the same same time you know we have seen that you know as we just pointed out GPU prices have gone up I just wonder at this point whether it's just going to push more people towards the PC simply because well you know you aren't paying the the monthly subscription fee you don't need to pay that at all if you want free games you get them from epic you know Cloud saves everything is there on Steam and actually produced in a in a better form than I'd say any of the consoles so I am concerned that this is actually going to push people towards conso uh towards PCS or towards just the regular PS5 or they'll wait for the switch 2 well you know there's a lot of people suggesting that the switch 2 is going to be like $500 which would been yeah but I mean you know getting a decent gaming PC ain't cheap either right so well yeah I mean I have seen some bargain forums with uh pre-built systems with an i5 and a 4060 for like 500 which you know I'd say that's actually really really good value it is but you know you know the kind of extra work it takes to get great performance out of that kind of machine right yeah for the 4060 yeah but 4060 yeah I just feel like yeah coming to that value proposition thing I don't the thing I think this is just kind of like the like the second level Mac Book you know like this is this is like like when you get they give you this choice and the people who really love PlayStation are going to buy this date that's why rich is saying it's going to sell sell out it will like the people who love PlayStation really I think they're just going to buy it but um but you know like when you think about like that utility of price I do think it is entering a different category of consumer electronic at that price level especially with the EU price level yes you will probably never beat a console currently with the manufacturing stuff going on uh at its price point for raw performance in a game uh but then you when you enter this price class category then you think well what if I instead invest the price I would have put into the disc drive into a PC you know and then you start getting into a different I mean a, Euro PC is actually pretty awesome no I I agree you know what I mean so PC still a different thing in terms of like it still sucks in the living room it is but it's not it's not great that's going to get addressed isn't it sooner that's that's what we've been talking about right and hopefully that is exactly what happens I mean if Microsoft doesn't do it valve are going to do it I mean the works essentially done really the steam translate perfectly to a to a desktop machine mostly mostly yeah but I don't think anybody really wants to create that desktop machine they just want to make PCS work and you just roll your own or let Aus uh or your neighborhood PC Builder make one instead I think that's probably the way forward in that regard it's going to require a lot of work from um PlayStation to to keep that audience if the price is just going to continually go up I mean I suspect that 10th gen consoles are no problem at all um they'll they'll somehow they'll make it happen um but 11th gen and Beyond I'm I'm really interested to see how they're going to be able to pull that off um What do we want to see out of PS5 Pro? yeah yeah crazy stuff um next topic before we move on to to support the questions what do we want to do with this machine we now know what it does in BO Strokes I'll tell you what I'd like to see I want to test that Ultra boost mode to see what it does for PS4 and PS5 titles um I want to um see Alex doing deep di into a pisser pssr I mean you've got games um you know presumably all of the Sony sorry the Sony first party games like Horizon forbidden West Etc um the content should should be comparable with the PC versions um particularly when it comes to the specific tests that that you specialize in Alex you es yeah especially think since the The Last of Us Part Two is going to launch and knowing Naughty Dog they won't use Dynamic R so I'll try and avoid titles that use Dynamic res because that'll lead to un uneven Playing Fields uh and makes it just comp complex but I think those Naughty Dog titles if they add it to t-loop part one as well too that could be another great comparison point to a certain degree so you know there's a lot to be said there MH yeah raid racing I don't know what we can do on that except to essentially chart what they're actually using the features for um really interested to see what those features are going to be in the in the Sony documentation they were basically saying for example you if a game has RT Reflections you can add RT Shadows if a game doesn't have R tracing at all you could add rate racing which is once again I I I mean yes but the the lack of a CPU upgrade here is the one thing where I'm like we know it's super expensive on a CPU to do this R exactly what I was thinking but then again Alex I feel like if you're already if you've already incurred that CPU cost and you're doing other rate tracing effects adding another rate tracing effect is quite feasible it's more like totally it's for the games that don't have rate tracing we implementing it then there's that huge CPU cost that wasn't factored in and then there's a problem right MH right mhm any particular lines of inquiry you'd like to look into John when we get hands on with this Hardware I mean obviously pisser that's that is that is the big one for me I'm very very interested to see what pssr does for image quality I do think that actually might be the biggest game changer here uh if it's even if it's like even close to something like XS or especially dlss then it's going to be big I think especially on a TV because the thing about dlss is it's so good that it holds up even on a large screen at a desk with your face close to the screen on you know playing PC games it holds up really well on a TV you're basically it's going to solve the image quality problem yeah is how I would is how I'm hoping it will be um although one of the things I'm curious about is so two things I want to know first of all will there be a boost mode like uh PS4 Pro I'm going to say yes probably based on they've said there's going to be a a boost mode that would improve good good good there's also some bizarre talk of um image quality improvements for PlayStation 4 games which it's actually um given block capitals PlayStation image enhancement I believe it is or something quite like it so which which kind of sounds one baby which kind of sounds like uh dare I say it bespoke technology so I'm going to be interested that yeah uh enhanced image quality um okay I want to see what that means mhm just the actual full quote there other enhancements include PS5 Pro game game boost which can apply to more than eight and a half thousand backwards compatible PS4 games playable on PS5 Pro this feature may stabilize or improve the performance of supported PS4 and PS5 games enhanced image quality for PS4 games is also available to improve the resolution on select PS4 games select is weird though what the heck does this mean it's kind of suggests that maybe um uh enhanced resolutions or or even pssr may be uh injected into PS4 titles but it sounds as though it's going to be a um a developer feature the interesting stuff first first thing I want to test is Elden ring is it is it gonna is it gonna fix it like finally is it will you actually be able to play this at 60 FPS maybe even with the r tracing turned on I would be surprised about the raid facing but uh I think the performance mode should be doable one one would hope we'll see the other thing I'm curious about and I feel like I already know the answer but will they improve the vrr support um I feel like no but gosh darn it if you're listening if you're watching this anyone from PlayStation guys like there are ways to improve this the vrr support needs work it needs to have lowf frame rate compensation come on now mhm okay cool um let's move on supporter questions we've got a bunch of them and uh I'm going to start off if I can bring the sheet up um with actually a couple of uh points and questions from SJ 33 in Brackets Jake hi Jake hi Jake and t- money 58 basic basically saying the same Supporter Q1: Was Microsoft right to skip an enhanced console this generation? point hi all says Jake Xbox don't make many correct decisions but could we agree they were correct to not make their own Pro console and t- money 58 says I feel like Phil is quite pleased with himself with not pursuing an Xbox rival to PS5 Pro based on that showing Am I Wrong this all kind of comes back to the concept of value for the extra money that you're going to get and whether it's worthwhile or not uh pH obviously made the the determination that it's not um Sony made the determination that it was where do you stand on it John oh my gosh uh we have to see the games really don't we we got to see the games to see if it's even worth it at all and it may so obviously in terms of sold consoles between the two the PlayStation 5 is leading the Xbox by a very large margin right now uh and even then we're still debating whether this is worthwhile right I think with the Xbox space when you look at what the sales have been like for the console lately they're not really moving many units anymore like the subsidized console models clearly not working very well for them at this point which is why we've been talking about them shifting gears potentially for Next Generation in the first place so given what they might be doing uh it absolutely makes zero sense for them to launch another enhanced uh subsidized Xbox right yeah like I I just that doesn't logically make sense especially if they're planning to shift their strategy so dramatically NextGen like this it just doesn't actually fit into it at all and so I think they absolutely made the right decision I think they're writing this out for now and they're just going to keep they're going to keep releasing games on Xbox series consoles you're still going to get Xbox games they're coming along smooth Game Pass is still going and then they have big plans for next time and there's just no way that an Xbox series I don't even know what you call it trip X would make the triple XX would make any sense this time because with Xbox 1X it actually did make a lot of sense given that Xbox one was the first conso Xbox release that was basically inferior technically to the competition like Xbox and Xbox 360 were built on the fact that they were the better box PS3 tried to claim it was but it really wasn't let's be honest the the 360 was a better piece of Kit overall uh Xbox One was a gigantic step down and Xbox One X basically caught up and surpassed uh the best of that gen it didn't necessarily win them the generation but it definitely did did something for hearts and minds and it was a beautifully designed console that sort of made up for the deficiencies of that original Xbox One both in terms of power and just physical design I would also say like it was just a really nice box but yeah that it just this sort of thing doesn't need to happen right now and Xbox series X is still it's everything it needs to be right now still yeah I'd also argue that um you know with all of the Microsoft G coming out on PC exactly I don't think this is a hardware problem it's a software problem they needs to make their PC versions of their games actually tap into all of the you know all of the high-end features that PC has to offer and there's been progress there but it's been slow um it is slow I mean there's no reason why fors of Motorsport shouldn't have shipped with the rtgi that was booted for example I mean highend PCS I mean Alex has demonstrably proven that actually works and and works in a playable sense so you know that's that's kind of where I think Microsoft should be putting their emphasis for now at least on the software side and on PC um and then you know there's there's a multitude of um uh Hardware out there that can that can use those features so I don't think uh Phil is uh woing rowing the day so to speak uh with the arrival of PS5 Pro it's just not really on their radar at the moment um should we move on this question from uh richardon graphicus emperor of the Republic of Gamers dude these names get better and Supporter Q2: Is GT7’s 8K mode as stupid as it sounds? better every day grand7 we get an 8K mode according to a p to a Cena PS5 Pro Hands-On interview is that as stupid as it sounds we kind of talked about that a bit earlier right John uh it's on the face of it it probably is a bit stupid in terms of over application DFT yeah I think that's probably frivolous should we say exactly um because we live in a world where 8K you know screens came out you know good four years ago and nobody was interested I owned one for four years and I got no particular needs to have a 8K screen I've moved back to a 4K with OLED um so it's it's not stupid is it it's just the fact thaty digital like doing this kind of stuff I think that's literally all it is this is just this is what py digital likes to do they love to push the envelope on weird random Tech things and they have that they have a rich tradition of doing exactly that I even earlier I mentioned the other things but they even had that 60fps mode in Gran Turismo on PS1 right so like they they love to fiddle with sort of pushing the boundaries of things I'll be curious to see what the 8K mode actually entails if it's the full game what the frame rate's like like what is it it could be like it might limited to certain types of races possibly but then again they're already pushing the VR stuff and they have 120 FPS mode uh on the regular PS5 like clearly there's enough room where if they're able to do like 4K 60 with r tracing in game now on the pro then it makes sense that they would be able to do 8K 60 uh without R tracing I would say right oh yeah I mean I I think well I don't think 8K with like native but I think maybe no PSS like with with 4K internal like try try to even conceptualize the cost of relay K is just oh gosh yeah oh yeah uh but I would yeah I would imagine it's something like that that would be interesting to see still so the question I have though is if they actually unlock a proper 8K output for the console side which was missing both machines if they do that are we going to get the tourist just automatically working the developers suggest that we probably would but I don't know that it could potentially work so okay that was their Theory but they obviously couldn't test it yet okay that's interesting I wouldn't be surprised knowing shinan though they would probably goat if it didn't work exactly going back to this gt7 thing I reckon it's going to be you know it's going to be using pssr pretty sure right so it's going to be an interesting exercise just to get the captures and to see how good pssr works upscaling to 8K I can't imagine they're going to be doing native vers resolution 8K rendering no no no no so it's it's an interesting bullet point for us to test I think um and you know we are here we have the technology we did 8K capture from um uh RTX 490 a while back so you know we we're good to go there we as stupid as it sounds we're GNA be doing it let's um let's move on to this question uh we got a couple actually from the same guy but we'll we'll um all go who knows um this runs from cookie Supporter Q3: What PC GPU is the best match for PS5 Pro? cut uh cookie butter actually not cookie cutter uh Sony claim a 45% increase in graphical power compared to uh PS5 with a major Improvement of rate racing and upscaling to which PC GPU do you believe will most closely match the new PS5 Pro GPU now this is really tricky right because um obviously there were a great there was a great deal of commonality between the PlayStation 5 uh GPU and the RX 6700 10 gig um same level of compute units uh broadly similar processing power different memory bandwidth but when we tested it in like for like scenarios very very close um there are two AMD gpus that we've kind of had in mind for this um and they would be the AMD RX radon 6800 not the 6800 XT that should deliver your 45% uh GPU improvement over uh Bas PS5 or um and it also has 60 compute units I believe and the alternative to that from the rdna 3 lineup would be the RX 7800 XT but you would need to downclock that significantly to about like 2.15 GHz I think um to get a similar level of compute the problem with talking about all of this is that um neither of those gpus will presumably have the rdna 4 based RT features that are in that we think are in the PlayStation 5 Pro so that probably wouldn't be a good match similarly there's not going to be any machine learning silicon in there um it's just extensions it's just it's just running um ml extensions on the cus right on rdna 3 is that correct Alex I think that's the case yeah that's it that's at least for the consumer product yeah yeah yeah so um yes there's there's nothing to run pisser on or or even you know an equivalent I am intrigued as to what the footprint of x dp4 a is but it's not the same thing so yeah um we were thinking about the RTX 370 TI I think Alex yeah um broadly equivalent compute does have dlss does have better raid facing but even then it's mostly guesswork on the those features it's like yeah that's guesswork and also if we're doing compar and trying to get that to get proper on PC the PS5 Pro is going to have more available Graphics memory which is going to like there's no great analog at the moment until maybe rdna A4 comes out and then we'll start seeing more analoges I think I mean the CU will be different in rdna 4 but we'll at least have something hopefully more similar and hopefully by rdna 4 we're going to be start seeing uh machine learning acceleration in desktop gpus a MH okay let's move on to the next question it is another one from cookie butter the announcement had a focus on Supporter Q4: Will Sony encourage developers to stick to a single PS5 Pro mode, or have multiple? not choosing between performance or Fidelity modes do you think s will encourage developers to have a single PS5 Pro mode to fulfill this Vision or are we destined to see even prettier 30 FPS games John if you build it there will be 30 FPS it always happens it is it is inevitable it is inevitable we saw it in this presentation too right uh yeah I mean it does seem like they are potentially encouraging developers to dial this back by specifically saying that you won't have to choose that that seems to be a marketing push for them which leads me to believe that Sony titles might go that direction not all of them gt7 clearly is not going to go in that direction uh others might um but I feel like on the third party side I don't it's it's really it's hard to say like it feels like there's still there is still room for there to be a choice perhaps although with the CPU being what it is it kind of you kind of start everything starts to become more CPU bottleneck right yeah more than GPU bottleneck so I mention they just push up GPU features up to a certain point and then if you're CPU bottleneck there's kind of that kind of puts a hard cap on how how high your frame rate can go right yeah uh versus the regular machine so maybe they're more likely to load up on you know stuff like you know enhanced V distances higher resolution exactly so I think we're going to see probably frame rates similar to Performance modes on base PS5 but just with much better image quality okay Alex yeah I mean John actually said everything I probably would have said I think uh think something we said earlier that you know Mark Cy was talking about you know developers getting to grips with the hardware and then you rolling their own Solutions and I dare say we'll see various modes depending on what they come up with I think mode selection seems to have become a thing and I think that you know with the inherent nature of the scalability of a lot of U games these days when they're producing their PC versions there are going to be opportunities to bring some of those features those more GPU heavy features over to PlayStation 5 Pro and um and we'll still probably have Fidelity in performance modes okay uh let's move on um to the final question this one from tree Supporter Q5: Why doesn’t the PS5 Pro have a larger CPU upgrade? fingers uh so if it's an AMD Apu how can they increase the GPU size by 67% but no CPU change is this a totally custom chip for PS5 Pro doesn't strike me as a new AMD product or Xbox would have had the exact same upgrade Alex it's not the same uh it is a custom chip I think we're pretty goodar on that because you know we've got custom machine learning in there and you know I think there's going to be a strict Point stricks Halo based Apu from um AMD but it's the GPU is nowhere near as this this size it's more PS5 um yeah what do you think of this question I mean I guess the question is really you know why no CPU change I mean why I think is uh price and compatibility and uh size there the some of the larger things that changed in Zen overtime were cash sizes if you go between Zen one and Zen 3 um beefing up all the things that have made Zen better over time are going to be increasing die space Sony cut off parts of the FPU in the you know the PS5 to save on die space and things like that so um and Manufacturing costs as a result so I think it's it's mainly just they want to push that and they realize that people I I think like they realized it with the PS4 Pro like that had a arguably larger sizable um CPU upgrade than this does but I think they realized like people were just really loved those 4K checkerboard modes they they flaunted them on Twitter Etc they were really happy with them did they I don't know either way it was a talking point like like look I think that was the key Point yes you're right there was a there was a display imperative to produce a better PlayStation and the imperative this time around is basically Mark Cy saying 75% of people play in performance mode the performance modes don't look as good as they could here's the PlayStation 5 Pro to solve that problem yeah um yeah it would have otherwise been much more transformative and a much larger Gap towards next I me sorry a much closer step towards nextg if they changed it to a later Zen version it would also been more expensive like than it already is right now I think it's calculated very very well right I don't think it's necessarily the best thing ever I've said it tons of times on before on the channel if someone had a ryzen 53600 and they're upgrading their GPU I would say don't do that they're a different system so it's it's very different than what I would do but that doesn't mean the audience isn't fine with it I think there's a thing here which is that um this isn't isn't going to be addressing people who want a high-end PC because you know the whole PC ecosystem now is it's kind of moved on from 60 faves per second it's like 144 upwards uh with vrr and you know for that you're going to need a more modern CPU architecture you're going to need like ryzen 5000 x3d ryzen 7000 latest Intel Core um so you know that's that's kind of the way that is happening in the PC space and that's not something that's being addressed by the PS5 Pro it is literally you know a better looking PS5 experience it's not high-end PC it's not really troubling it in that regard um John any thoughts on this H not especially I think you guys have covered this pretty thoroughly I think the cost issue is is probably quite a big thing because you know the Chip is going to be pretty large as it is and um d space area on that D matters uh a lot and the later Zen do occupy significantly more die area and they probably not getting proportionately the same boost in performance as you would from you know adding a GPU that's much larger along with machine learning based upscaling uh so yeah I think that's just you know the way it is unfortunately next gen though who knows um that is the final question therefore the end of this particular DFX special I hope you enjoyed it uh like subscribe share on the off charts you did there is some I found found that right now on eBay uh you can get a copy of Kon for Sony PlayStation 2 with water damage for just $749 making that it's only a little bit more than the PS5 Pro in North America so if you can if you can spare that extra 50 bucks you too can own a water damaged copy of Kon okay that's essential information just letting you know it's out there uh as I said like subscribe share if you enjoyed the content ring the bell for messaging that may or they 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