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Don’t Own a 4K TV? Then Skip the PS4 Pro

Don’t Own a 4K TV? Then Skip the PS4 Pro

At Sony’s conference back in September, a select few lucky people got to see the PS4 Pro in action on Sony’s 4K HDR amazing TVs. It’s been said that the demo of Horizon Zero Dawn looks breathtaking on these screens and because of the “super-sampling” (the 4K image downscaled to full HD resulting in apparently excellent anti-aliasing) it will look great on 1080p too. That all makes sense in theory, but I feel I must point out that 4K and HDR capable televisions are still very pricy. With Black Friday, the sales of these televisions turn to a $400 – $800 range. Which is still a bit pricey for a new TV, so I really don’t think building a system around the PS4 Pro is worth it – yet.

Quite a few games, as reported by Digital Foundry, are turning out to run worse on the PS4 Pro than the regular PS4. The games they list are the remastered Skyrim, The Last of Us, Rise of the Tomb Raider , and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided . All are running into frame rate drops, some more drastic than others, at particular moments in the play through. Furthermore, the super-sampling doesn’t always look as great on 4K as we might hope. Skyrim Special Edition suffers the most here, as Digital Foundry describes: “running on a standard PS4 at 1080p, Skyrim features a distinctly soft appearance that lacks the sharpness you’d expect to see when running 1:1 pixel-mapped on a full HD screen, caused by the game’s temporal AA solution blurring the image to a noticeable degree.”

As the target consumer for the PS4 Pro is someone who can tell the difference between 4K and 1080p or 30fps versus 60fps, these problems spell doom for the console. First of all, as much as Sony seems to think money grows on pixels, your average gamer is not made of money. Shelling out an extra grand (at least) for both new a TV and PS4 Pro is not done easily. Second, such a person will be even harder to convince if they already have a PS4. And frankly, if they call themselves hardcore gamers they’ve probably had a PS4 for a few years now. Why spend more money on a console you need a new TV for? That’s like, twice the cost for an upgrade that is a complete waste of time until Sony (and developers) figure out to use the full potential of the PS4 Pro hardware.

Don’t Own a 4K TV? Then Skip the PS4 Pro

If games aren’t working right on the PS4 Pro, the only thing left to buy one for is PSVR. This apparently runs quite smoothly no matter what on the PS4 Pro. This might make the Pro worth it, if the PSVR was ever bundled with the console at a reduced cost (free would be nice). All right, so that means you’d be buying a console just for VR. Well, it’s decidedly less costly than the HTC Vive and you’d get the Sony games you’re already interested in. In this case, the brand new TV wouldn’t be as necessary, which also reduces the overall cost. This makes sense; I think I can get behind that. If I had $500 burning a hole in my pocket, I would probably buy that bundle just for Resident Evil VII .

But I don’t. Right now, the PS4 Pro just isn’t worth it. If you have a 4K HDR TV already and you don’t have a PS4 (for some reason) and are looking to buy one, the PS4 Pro is for you. If you already have a PS4 and a 1080p or 4K HDR TV, don’t bother. The content isn’t there yet and the cost is simply too high.

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