Sony’s PS4 Pro provides a mid-generation graphics bump to PS4 games [Updated]

Sony announced a successor to the PlayStation 4 today, but it’s not intended to replace the console launched back in 2013 (that job goes to the new PS4 Slim). Instead, the PlayStation 4 Pro is an upgraded tier of console that is designed to play the same games as the existing PS4 at a higher fidelity—meaning, with 4K resolutions and HDR (high dynamic range).

Confirming rumors first reported back in March, the Pro sports an improved CPU, GPU, and greater memory bandwidth than its predecessors, and it will ship on November 10, priced at $399/£349. Sony’s Mark Cerny confirmed a 1TB hard drive will ship in all PS4 Pro consoles, which looks much like the existing, slight-angle, all-black PS4 model, only with a “third-wedge” addition to its width. Other technical specs were not announced at the press conference.

Updated, September 8: After the conference, Sony posted a specifications list for the console and confirmed that the new GPU is based on AMD’s Polaris architecture. This spec list confirmed a previously leaked 4.2 teraflop performance measurement—meaning, the spec leak from earlier this year did not receive a last-minute boost. On the PC side, AMD’s Polaris architecture is not a native 4K capable part. While there will be some native 4K games on the PS Pro, many will use an advanced 4×4 checkerboard upscaling process, allowing developers to create a 4K framebuffer from half the pixels. Others will offer fidelity and frame rate boosts at a 1080p resolution.

The confirmed specs for the PS Pro line up with leaks from earlier in the year.

Cerny introduced 4K footage of PS4 Pro-compatible games launching in the future, including Ubisoft’s For Honor and Insomniac’s upcoming Spider-Man game, along with previously released games like last month’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. During these demonstrations, Cerny made clear that models and textures were the “exact same ones that were created for the PS4,” with the newer Pro system pulling the rendering weight to boost to something that works on a 4K display. He stressed that the system pulled the brunt of the work, as opposed to game developers, so that “smaller teams can bring their titles to PS4 Pro and the new world of higher resolution displays.”

Cerny hinted at a mix of boosted core resolution and anti-aliasing techniques to display current PS4 games at higher fidelity—meaning, this may not offer a true, full boost to 4K resolution for games on the newer hardware. Just like the 4K-compatible Xbox One S, the PS4 Pro will also receive an updated Netflix app that supports 4K and HDR content streaming. Sony’s Andrew House also confirmed that the new console will receive an updated, 4K-compatible YouTube app.

Unfortunately, 4K video geeks will have to look elsewhere for 4K Blu-ray compatibility, as the PS4 Pro will not support that disc standard.

PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro price/release details.

Boosts for every device that you might want to connect to a PS4 Pro.

While HDR and 4K boosts led off the presentation, Cerny also made it clear that people with standard HDTV sets should expect boosts. “Developers are free to tailor the experience to best fit the type of TV you use,” Cerny said when describing boosts for 1080p sets. Third-party games like Paragon and Shadow of Mordor were shown with visual boosts like greater detail in an average gameplay scene. Cerny is calling this kind of boost in older games “forward compatibility,” and this will come to “over a half-dozen first party titles” and “quite a few from our third-party partners.”

Upcoming PlayStation VR games will see boosts when played on PS4 Pro, as well. Elements such as pixel count and world detail can be boosted by PSVR games that support PS4 Pro compatibility. “For the highly discriminating gamer, there is room for advancement, and they want it in this generation,” Sony’s Andrew House told the New York City event crowd. “We’re excited about 4K and high dynamic range.”

Gameplay snippets from the PS Pro in glorious 4K.

As part of the event’s third-party support announcements, Activision CTO Andy Hendrickson appeared at the event to announce PS4 Pro compatibility for upcoming games Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and the CoD Modern Warfare remaster—and a “forward compatibility” patch coming to last year’s CoD game, Black Ops 3.

Back at E3, Microsoft announced its own mid-generation hardware upgrade, codenamed Scorpio, is set to launch near the end of 2017.

Sam Machkovech contributed to this report.