It turns out that part of the reason the PS4 Pro exists is to stop PlayStation gamers from migrating to PC in search of a high end gaming experience.
This is according to PlayStation president Andrew House, who discussed his thoughts in a new interview with The Guardian.
House explained:
I saw some data that really influenced me. It suggested that there’s a dip mid-console lifecycle 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. 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.
The PS4 Pro is, of course, a much more powerful alternative to the standard PS4. The newly announced console boasts 4.2 teraflops of GPU performance, and runs 4K and HDR (you can see the full specs here).
While that’s not to be sniffed at, it’s likely that the most dedicated will still get more out of a PC if they’re willing to put the time and effort into a rig.
But between the PS4 Pro and the upcoming (even more powerful) Xbox Scorpio, it’ll be interesting to see if these new consoles have any kind of impact on PC gaming.
We won’t have long to wait to find out – the PS4 Pro lands November 10, while the Xbox Scorpio is due sometime in 2017.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.