Opinion: As The Dust Settles On PS5 Pro, I’m Still Glad Xbox Didn’t Bother

Earlier this month, PS5 Pro was unveiled to the world by Sony, and it’s fair to say that the company’s grand reveal was a bit of a damp squib. Of course, the community’s main sticking point back then was the system’s inflated price tag, with PS5 Pro coming in at $700 on launch. It’s a hefty cost for sure, but with the dust now settling on that reveal, I think the PS5 Pro has lots more issues besides that.

Since the unveiling, we’ve started to see the Japanese game maker lift the lid on more and more PS5 Pro games. Some of those reveals have been in-house, while outlets such as Digital Foundry have also been on hand to share what Sony is doing with PS5 Pro. Whichever way I slice it though, these games look hardly any different to me, and I’m certainly not jealous over here on the green side of the gaming fence.

There just doesn’t feel like a real reason for this sort of ‘Pro’ machine to exist right now, and my mind hasn’t been changed on that since we’ve started to see some of the games in action. DF took a look at a bunch of PS5 Pro games earlier this week — including some third-party titles that are also on Xbox — and we’re beyond pixel-peeping here to see any sort of major difference. Yeah, the idea seems to be to get rid of existing ‘performance mode’ drawbacks – but if I’m sat on a sofa several feet away from my 4K telly, I can’t really see those blemishes anyway.

To be clear, last generation I was all-in on the idea of pro consoles; especially over on Xbox where it felt like a major leap was being presented to us. 4K TVs were coming down in price — I was looking at buying one anyway — so the whole thing just made sense. In practice it was a great move as well – Xbox One games would often dip well below 1080p, and the bump to much crisper resolutions was genuinely noticeable on Xbox One X.

And I thought ‘well, once we see PS5 Pro games I’m sure there’ll be a value there’, but I’m just not convinced. To me at least, Sony’s new machine is starting to look more and more like a public beta test for PS6 – features like the ‘PSSR’ AI upscaling are expected to be a huge part of next-gen gaming. Based on the evidence we’ve seen so far though, these features just aren’t delivering huge results yet, and I’m glad that Xbox isn’t asking its customers to take part in a public beta test for next-gen features. Oh, and a $700 beta test at that.

I do want to add that, of course, we’re only seeing certain PS5 Pro games in a pre-launch state right now. And yes, most of us are probably looking at these games on YouTube or similar formats – I certainly am. In that case, they may look a chunk better running natively on a proper telly, and we also might see some improved examples once the system has been out for a while. My point still stands though; Sony isn’t doing enough to sell this thing in the here and now, even if you take its silly price tag out of the equation.

Microsoft’s decisions this generation haven’t always made much sense to me, but avoiding a Pro version of the current-gen Xbox is one decision I can get behind. We already have both Xbox Series X and S, and looking at the early results of these mid-gen updates, I don’t think such a system would have provided value to the Xbox consumer. I’m excited to see what’s being worked on for this supposedly all-powerful next-gen Xbox, but for now, I’m very happy with the Series X and will continue to be for a few more years yet. FOMO can be a hell of a thing in gaming, but Sony hasn’t got me with PS5 Pro, and I’m happy to be patient for the next Xbox.

Do you agree with me, folks? As usual, give us a good old comment on the topic down below.