Today, Tuesday, September 10, Sony announced a brand new piece of hardware coming later this year. The PlayStation 5 Pro is slated for a November 7, 2024 release, and will cost a hefty $699.99 at launch.

Mark Cerny, veteran developer and the PS5's lead architect, gave a nine minute breakdown of the mid-generation hardware, and focused on its three main improvements: a beefier GPU, better ray tracing and AI-driven upscaling.

The GPU will have 67 percent more compute units than the base model, and benefit from faster memory too. Combined, Sony estimates that it's about 45 percent faster to render the same image than on the original hardware.

The improved ray tracing hardware will allow somewhere between a two-to-three times performance improvement. Now you can enjoy more realistic lighting and reflections without tanking the framerate.

As for the upscaling, this is an increasingly important factor for overall image quality in modern games. PC games benefit heavily from Nvidia's impressive upscaling solution, but consoles are largely left behind with inferior techniques until now.

It does come with a 2TB solid-state drive, but this very expensive device doesn't even come with a disc drive for games or 4K Blu-rays. You'll need to spend an extra $80 for an add-on.

Of course, we saw mid-generation updates from Sony and Microsoft with the PS4 and Xbox One, but those consoles were fairly anemic from day one.

Now? Plenty of people are still on last-gen hardware, and the huge jump in price is going to be a problem. If you're willing to spend that much money, why not go whole hog and get a gaming PC?

Time will tell if Sony's gambit pays off, but you can color us skeptical.

You can watch the entire presentation yourself below.

[Image: PlayStation]