The big picture: We’ve barely hit the midpoint of February and it’s already shaping up to be a big year for console refreshes. Nintendo is reportedly preparing to introduce its second generation Switch as early as next month, and now we’re hearing that Sony is prepping a mid-cycle refresh of the PS5 in time for the holidays.
YouTube channel Moore’s Law Is Dead (MLID) recently discussed the matter and believes Sony is considering launching the PS5 Pro with no disc drive – essentially a digital-only console – for $499. If true, that’d make it $50 more expensive than the existing PS5 Digital Edition.
Sony could then drop the price of the PS5 Slim down to $400 “if they need to,” the podcasters said.
Something else Sony could do is make the existing detachable disc drive compatible with the PS5 Pro Digital Edition, meaning you’d only have to purchase the accessory once in the event you upgrade from a standard Digital to a Pro Digital.
Earlier rumors claim the PS5 Pro will feature an APU built on a 4nm process. It will reportedly be based on AMD’s Zen 2 architecture with eight cores, and will ship with 56 Compute Units alongside 16 GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus.
The podcasters believe the jump from the PS5 to the PS5 Pro will be tamer than the leap from the PS4 to the PS4 Pro, but don’t seem to think it’ll be disappointing. What it could do is enable higher frame rates in games at the same settings or be able to push some games to 4K.
The duo also revisited the PlayStation handheld (Vita 2) rumor from earlier this month. The device, which is at least two years away, will reportedly ship with a custom AMD APU but not much else is known at this time.
MLID sees two possible outcomes: either it becomes a handheld capable of playing all PS4 digital and scaled-down PS5 Pro games, or perhaps it’ll be a handheld variant of the PlayStation 6. Either route could be intriguing, especially for those that like to game on the go.
Image credit: Totte Annerbrink
