There's a few components to consider about the Pro:
- Pricing and what it indicates
- Promised perf goals
- PSSR GONSAYKUENCES
So for pricing, there's the obvious low hanging fruit reason: they have no competition, might as well raise the price $100 above what was expected since who's gonna force them to drag it down? It's a perfectly sound analysis. More money = more happy capitalists.
There's a less obvious reason that has been mentioned, which is that they're testing the waters to see how much they can push the prices up in prevision of PS6. Obviously the Pro is a testbed for next gen, but I doubt that any $700 + vertical stand + disk ~= $820 is going to sell in large quantities, and I think Sony knows it.
The less less obvious reason that I think the pricing indicates is that Sony is kind of entering a console Sandwich, much like Unity is entering a game engine Sandwich. Unity is getting squeezed from below by Godot Engine, while it's squeezed from above by Unreal. Unable to reach Unreal's visual prowess or Godot's modern design principles, it's slowly being squeezed out of both the indie/midsize game market and the top quality game market.
What's the future PS6 sandwich then? It's the Steam Deck 2 from below and the PC from above. No console will touch PC performance, that one's a given. But the future Steam Deck is an interesting one.
The reason people buy a console is:
- having a cheap enough, cool looking box that runs their games without any hassle
- sitting in front of a big TV with a controller in hand, no m/kb stuff
- having that "press a button, boot to gameloader, start game, autosave things seamlessly" experience
While the latter may lack autosave, and the Deck is mostly a handheld thing, it's only a matter of time until it gets strong enough to be the rest. Already people are buying ROG Allys or Legion GOs and just plug them over HDMI on a telly, and they just game with it. A bluetooth/RF controller is $50 for a really good one these days, with really pleasant plastic under the fingers. Getting a "press the controller button, boot to gameloader, play game" is already 95% made. The problem for now is that the Deck has the Console experience mostly down (may lack autosaves/freeze game status), but it's a little weak with 4 Z2 cores/8CUs. Which is a problem that all the PHX, Strix Points, Halos, etc, have or will soon largely fix. Arguably the people plopping ROG Allys with Z1 Extreme on their TV and use it as their media station, game box, etc, already consider the HW good enough.
All it takes is for Gaben to start ordering a Z6 6 core/12-16CU thing that'll boot to Steam, while letting you install Netflix, a Jellyfin or whatever you'd like. That kind of "console experience but you could also plug in a kb/mouse if you like and run your TV like a gaming PC" is basically satisfying 90% of the console market. If people still play Switch in 2024, you can be sure that it's not a 6c Zen 6 that will be severely lacking.
Which brings me back to pricing. Consoles will never (and have no point) reaching PC level HW. But if they're going to start competing with Steam Deck like boxes that can run emulators, go on the web, serve as a media box, and boot to your steam/games list and it's all controller-able, with custom boot animation and no ugly "booting linux kernel" lines...it's a tough sell. A $500 PS6 would seriously have a hard time offering itself as "vastly superior" as a full fledged Steam Deck 2 with 1/4th the processing power, but a ton of generic PC capability and still enough HW to run your PS6 games on PC with a degraded framerate and graphical experience. It's not UNSELLABLE...it's just harder to sell.
So the strategy that Sony's going for is? To raise the prices for good on the PS5 Pro, and to make $800 or so the baseline for the PS6. Sure, it'll sell less units. But just like the Pro is showing, it's allowing consoles to go from a entry-midrange GPU to a high midrange. And that's a level of performance that no cheap handheld level or mini PC box can come to. Even the Pro's 60 CUs will not be equalled or even approached by 2028. Maybe a bold one will get a 35W handheld burning in people's hands with 20-24 CUs. But you don't catch up to a 300W machine with a 30W one even if you're in the 7th year of life of the 300W machine.
I think that the price isn't just to "test the waters for PS6", it's checking their options to completely remove the "cheap box" competition out. Arguably a PS6 isn't going to be challenged by any handhelds, sure. But one, if it gets popular, mini PC boxes will go beyond handheld power levels. And two, while no box will mean anything at the PS6 launch day, a box that is "PS5 competitive" in 2028 will be replaced by a "PS6 games capable" one by 2031, and they'd rather not take the competition.