It'll be a mix of people upgrading and people buying it as their first PS5. I don't think it's going to be a significant driver of sales on its own after the frantic scalping period.
PS4 Pro only ended up being about 12% of the PS4 install base by the end of last generation. If the base PS5 remains on the market and is less expensive than the PS5 Pro then it's probably reasonable to believe that 12% is probably also the ratio Sony expects this time around. Games will continue to be made to base PS5 specs because there are already 50+ million of those out there. No games will be made specifically for PS5 Pro specs, they'll have Pro support bolted on. So game prices in general will probably stay the same.
Dunno why, but this bolded part's gonna trigger a small rant from me.
If Sony don't slow down or stop the PC ports for non-GAAS titles they aren't getting near 12% this time around. Because for the core who'd buy a Pro, there's less reason to do so when they can get those 1P games on an as-good-or-better PC shortly after the PS5 versions release, and still play their multiplats with better settings in the meantime on the same PC.
The fact Sony's inadvertently ported almost
all of their big non-GAAS titles since 2020 to PC by now, only halfway through the console gen, and only have a handful of actual exclusive 1P left, is insanely short-sighted of them. If the Nvidia leak's true, the only games 1P that could still exclusive to PS5 that'll be left (non-GAAS) by EOY, are Astro's Playroom and Spiderman 2. A whopping 1.5 games (Astro's more of a "demo" not a full game).
Every single port since 2020 was Sony giving less and less reason for PS5/PC core enthusiasts to consider a PS5 Pro and it's a damn shame. Hopefully they are changing that strategy because, yeah, great tech aside the Pro could face a big challenge hitting even 8% of PS5 lifetime sales when all's said and done, if they don't have the 1P exclusives (actual exclusives, not timed 1-2 year exclusives before porting to PC) to push it. Because besides just that software issue, PSVR2 isn't hitting the same way PSVR1 did (which benefited the PS4 Pro), and there is no 4K TV market rush/growth like when the PS4 Pro was a thing, either.
So in what world is a PS5 Pro whose big selling point to hardcore/core enthusiasts (vast majority of Pro customers) is playing 1P timed exclusives at settings still lower than an inevitable PC ports 1-2 years later (or Day 1 in some cases, for non-GAAS you never know), going to do 12% of the install base numbers let alone higher?
Well sorry for the semi-rant I just had to look at the sales part from the perspective of what drivers are or aren't present to push PS5 Pro the same way PS4 Pro was pushed. But most critically how the biggest driver potentially absent is 100% of Sony's own doing. I hope that's changed internally because both PS5 & the Pro, and also systems like PS6, definitely need that big driver back.
Also one other thing: why are people still obsessed with TFs? I thought that poison went away a couple years ago but people are still determining all performance gains from TF paper specs. Did we learn nothing from the PS5 vs. Series X TF nothingburger?
