Sony tests the waters of high pricing of PS5 Pro for next-gen PlayStation 6: could cost $999+

Sony has officially announced its PlayStation 5 Pro console, priced at $699 and launching November 7, 2024... with its high price tag not sitting well with gamers.

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In a world where flagship smartphones debut with multi-thousand-dollar prices, high-end GPUs that are even more expensive, gamers aren't happy with the $699 pricing of the beefed-up PS5 Pro. In a new video, leaker Moore's Law is Dead thinks that the high pricing of the PS5 Pro is a test for even higher pricing of the next-generation PS6 console.

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 6 console is already in development, with AMD winning the contract to create a new semi-custom SoC for the PS6... but how expensive will it be? If the PS5 Pro is $699, could the new PS6 cost something like $999? If we're offered full 4K 120FPS+ and 8K 60FPS+ gaming out of the PlayStation 6, I would say so... and with Microsoft floundering with its Xbox, Sony can do whatever it wants if it has a powerful enough PS6 on offer.

The standard PS5 and even the new beefed-up PS5 Pro both feature a semi-custom APU that features an AMD Zen 2 CPU, but I think we'll see the introduction of the new Zen 5 architecture for the PS6. AMD's new RDNA 4 GPU architecture could be considered, but with RDNA 4 features inside of the new PS5 Pro, we could expect the next-gen RDNA 5 GPU architecture joining Zen 5 inside of the PlayStation 6.

Offering possibly over double the performance of the PS5 Pro, the new PS6 could command a higher $999 price tag in a world where the PS5 Pro will cost $699. Grand Theft Auto 6 will be launching in 2025 and could see a bump in pricing to make games even more expensive than before, and developing games for a higher-end, next-generation PS6 console are only going to get more expensive... bigger, better-looking games on a beast, next-gen (and probably more expensive) PS6 console.

The skinny on Sony's upgraded PS5 Pro console:

• PS5 Pro is 45% faster than standard PS5: The upgraded GPU inside of the PS5 Pro is 45% faster than the standard PS5, with the GPU being 67% bigger than the GPU inside of the standard PS5. There's also 28% faster memory (18Gbps GDDR6) inside of the PS5 Pro.
• 2-3x faster in RT performance: An increase of 45% in performance over the standard PS5 is impressive, but the new RDNA 4 GPU tricks inside of the PS5 Pro will reportedly provide an insane 2-3x performance increase on new "PS5 Pro Enhanced" games on a PlayStation 5 Pro console.
• PSSR, an AI-powered upscaling tech for PS5 Pro: The new PS5 Pro console will have some AI technology (of course) which will power an exciting new AI upscaling technology: PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution -- or PSSR -- which means we're going to see some of the best graphics (and performance) we've seen out of a console yet with the PS5 Pro.
• PS5 Pro Enhanced games: Sony will have a new "PS5 Pro Enhanced" label for games, which will see games using PSSR to upscale the resolution to 4K, a constant 60FPS, and then add or increase ray tracing effects and performance.