The president and global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has revealed that PlayStation Pro was conceived as a means of keeping gamers from transitioning towards PC mid-cycle, as opposed to being a reaction to Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox Scorpio.
Sony plays down PS4 Pro vs Xbox Scorpio war
Speaking to The Guardian, Andrew House said that mid-cycle is a significant turning point for most consumers, who tend to migrate to the PC platform as it traditionally provides the best visual experiences in gaming.
“I saw some data that really influenced me. It suggested that there’s a dip mid-console life cycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC, because that’s obviously where it’s to be had.
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“We wanted to keep those people within our ecosystem by giving them the very best and very highest [performance quality]. So the net result of those thoughts was PlayStation 4 Pro – and, by and large, a graphical approach to game improvement.”
House noted that “there wasn’t a word about Project Scorpio in the marketplace,” hence why the PS4 Pro wasn’t cobbled together as a response to Microsoft’s impending powerhouse system.
“We’re 40 million units into this lifecycle [and] our declared goal is to be a further 20 million units above that by the end of next year. At that point we’ve got a pretty good sense of where the momentum of the lifecycle is, but I think the Pro can be something new, innovative and possibly take us in a slightly different direction.”
PS4 Pro was announced during a special New York City event last Wednesday, where Sony confirmed a November 10, 2016 release date for the new console. The system will cost $399/£349.
Despite featuring more horsepower than the original PS4—Guerrilla Games says the system is twice as powerful as the regular model—Sony has noted that the new console isn’t intended to be the start of a new hardware generation.