PlayStation 4 Pro announced – release date and price revealed - The Guardian

Sony has announced a new, more powerful version of its PlayStation 4 console. Named the PlayStation 4 Pro, the machine features 4K compatibility, faster processor and enhanced graphics capabilities. It will launch on 10 November with a price point of $399, £349 and 399 euros.

PlayStation boss Andrew House said the new machine is, “targeted to the hardcore gamer or those who have invested in high end display technology”. System architect Mark Cerny promised that the new model has twice the graphics processing power, with a GPU based on – and exceeding - AMD’s new Polaris tech.

The increased system power will pave the way for true 4K resolution games, as well as more visually detailed virtual reality titles to support Sony’s PlayStation VR headset which is launching on 13 October. The original PS4 will still be able to run virtual reality titles, but with lower screen resolutions or at lower frame rates.

The PlayStation 4 family, with new slimmer PS4, PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation VR headset Photograph: David Cornish

Several forthcoming PlayStation titles, both from Sony and third-party publishers are set to support features of the PS4 Pro, including Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Fifa 17 and Horizon: Zero Dawn. Sony also announced that many already released titles will receive patches to take advantage of the Pro’s new graphical capabilities, including Uncharted 4 and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

“Even if you own an HDTV that does not support either 4K or HDR, PS4 Pro still provides a number of benefits,” said House. “All games will run in 1080p resolution, and some will even run in a higher or more stable framerate. If you’re a gamer that wants to be at the forefront of innovation, PS4 Pro is for you.”

New YouTube and Netflix apps are on the way, especially designed for the PS4 Pro and offering hours of 4K content. The Netflix app will feature Luke Cage and Narco season two in 4K. However, news site Business Insider is reporting that the PS4 Pro does not support playback of 4K Blu-ray discs, unlike the new Xbox One S.

PS4 originally launched in November 2013, and a refreshed iteration has been talked about for months under the codename PlayStation 4 Neo. Supposedly leaked technical documents previously suggested that the machine would feature a 4.14 TFLOP graphics processor with 218GB-per-second GDDR5 memory.

After the PlayStation Meeting event, Sony distributed a press release that showed the leaked specs were indeed correct. PlayStation 4 Pro features an x86-64 AMD Jaguar, eight-core CPU and an AMD Radeon-based graphics engine, promising a performance of 4.20 teraflops (floating-point operations per second).

The PlayStation 4 Pro will arrive a whole year before Microsoft’s updated Xbox One, currently codenamed Project Scorpio, which is set for release in Winter 2017. Little is known about that technology as yet, but at the E3 expo in Los Angeles in June, Microsoft claimed its new iteration will boast an eight-core central processing unit, six teraflops of graphical power and support 4K resolution gaming. AMD, the graphics chipset manufacturer behind the original Xbox One, has confirmed that it is supplying the hardware for Scorpio.

PlayStation 4 appears to be winning this generation’s console battle. The company claims to have sold more than 40m PS4 units, and although Microsoft is not revealing sales for its Xbox One, analysts suggest it has shifted around 22m units. However, this mid-lifespan update, may well test PlayStation’s dominancy. “Microsoft’s cheaper Xbox One S steals some of Sony’s Pro thunder, with a significant overlap in 4K features between the two consoles,” said analyst Piers Harding-Rolls of IHS Markit Technology.

Both companies are keen not to alienate current PlayStation 4 and Xbox One owners by making the original machines obsolete. Sony and Microsoft claim that all forthcoming game releases throughout the lifetime of these machines will run on all iterations of the hardware – discs and downloaded titles will include augmented versions of the game code for the more powerful PlayStation 4 Pro and Project Scorpio machines.

Sony also announced a new smaller version of PS4. The announcement mirrors Microsoft’s recent successful launch of the re-engineered Xbox One S machine. However, Microsoft’s update also added 4K video and HDR visual support, while the slimline PS4 will only support HDR functionality.

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