Sony officially unveils the PlayStation 5 Pro and how it dropped the ball

Sony has pulled the curtain off the highly anticipated PlayStation 5 Pro, and the announcement has been somewhat of a mixed bag for Sony, with many fans criticizing the company for making concessions in places it shouldn't have, along with a price hike of $200 compared to the standard PlayStation 5.

Now that the dust has settled from the announcement, I wanted to give my overall impressions and where I believe Sony dropped the ball, ultimately leading to the public opinion of the PS5 Pro being controversial, as anecdotally represented by the Like to Dislike ratio on the announcement video (94,000 Likes vs 176,000 Dislikes at the time of writing). Firstly, all of the leaked specifications for the PS5 Pro were pretty much on the money, which meant that anyone who caught that news wouldn't have been surprised by any of the performance improvements.

Keeping to performance improvements, I believe this is where Sony totally missed the mark. The presentation showcased the PS5 Pro's impressive performance capabilities, which include an approximate boost of 45% compared to the PS5 and 2-3x faster RayTracing performance. However, Sony decided to showcase this performance jump on games that the majority of originally launched on the PS4. Even with the PS5 titles showcasing this performance increase, Sony touted background graphical improvements that weren't visually representative of a performance boost, or at the very least didn't warrant the $200 jump from the standard PS5.

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Unfortunately, I believe Sony's hands were tied when it came to showing off old games running on new hardware, as the company currently doesn't have any big system-selling first-party titles ready to showcase. There isn't a new Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon, or Last of Us game to reveal with next-gen graphics powered by the PS5 Pro, and that is where I believe Sony dropped the ball most. If Sony did have a surprise reveal of a new first-party title with incredible graphics, it would have made the price and the two other concessions Sony made with PS5 Pro much easier to swallow. But instead, viewers saw a collection of old games that look slightly better running on beefer hardware.

Sony removed the optical drive along with the inclusion of a vertical stand, forcing buyers to purchase them both separately. Additionally, the PS5 Pro will be priced at $699, which is $200 more than the standard PS5, but the PS5 Pro doesn't come with an optical drive or vertical stand, while the standard PS5 does.

Despite the controversy surrounding the PS5 Pro, Sony might just be biding its time, waiting for the release of Grand Theft Auto VI, as Sony is rumored to have secured exclusive marketing rights to Rockstar's latest game. With the release of GTA 6 on the horizon and the possibility Sony has secured exclusive marketing rights, it simply won't matter that Sony doesn't have any major first-party game to market the PS5 Pro, as the release of GTA 6 sometime late next year will do all of the marketing they need for the console, plus more.