According to Hideaki Nishino, development of the PlayStation 5 Pro began before the base model even hit store shelves!
In an interview with Variety, Nishino, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Platform Business Group, said that the PlayStation 5’s half-generation update was not the result of a sudden decision. The base PlayStation 5 will debut on November 19, 2020, but by then the design of the PlayStation 5 Pro was already taking shape. According to him, the idea was to continue the ten-year generation cycle that had already expired for the PlayStation 4, as that console debuted in the fall of 2013.
“We did [a] Pro [console] in the last generation. We learned a lot from that. When we were selling the PlayStation 4 Pro, in addition to the PlayStation 4, 20 percent of our customers actually got the PlayStation 4 Pro. It was high-end, it was premium. So there are potential users who are buying those kinds of units. Interestingly enough, it was not just highly engaged users, it was actually new users coming to PlayStation to get a PlayStation 4 Pro.
So we started working on PlayStation 5 Pro even before PlayStation 5 came out – it was another five-year project for us. So there was a discussion about whether we wanted to do another Pro or not. But the main thing was that there are technologies that we can develop in three or five years. So the innovation and technology advancement is faster in a modern world. Phones and PCs are updated every year. I don’t think we’re going to update every year, but there are things that we can package together to bring the greatest things to the game console segment. So that’s the vision.
We’re kind of happy to see [that] the most dedicated gamers are interested in the PlayStation 5 Pro, and then I’m pretty sure new users will pick up the PlayStation 5 Pro as well. If it’s the PlayStation you want to get, that’s the thing. So that’s how we’re designing the generation right now. We design everything with one thing in mind. It’s not like we’re just making a next step and we don’t know about the two steps before that. That’s not the way we work, because we have to make sure that the 10-year generation cycle continues.
PlayStation 5 Pro will be available from November 7th.
