| Hi everyone. Today we’re trying to figure out why the PS5 Pro feels so unnecessary, but first... This week’s top gaming news: The most striking thing about this week’s PlayStation 5 Pro reveal wasn’t the internal power or sticker price (although that one was pretty shocking). It was the games. In a nine-minute presentation revealing the new iteration of the PS5 and touting its impressive hardware specs, lead architect Mark Cerny showed footage of games including The Last of Us Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Forbidden West and Gran Turismo 7. One common factor? They were all also released on PlayStation 4 — and look perfectly fine on the 2013 console. Another common factor? They all have incredible graphics — despite most of the games being years old. Many video-game enthusiasts have noticed over the last few years that graphics have reached a point of diminishing returns. Gone are the days of primitive avatars and chunky monsters. Today, most video games hit a level of graphical fidelity so vivid and realistic that it’s hard not to marvel at the pores on a hero’s face or the way that blades of grass sway in the wind. It’s become redundant to say that a modern game has “great graphics,” the way we might have in the 1990s or early 2000s. These days, they all do. In the past, each console generation brought forward massive leaps in technology. Going from the PlayStation 1 to the PlayStation 2 was a revelation, transforming blocky angles and deformed faces into characters and buildings that popped on the screen. But by the mid-2010s, you had to start squinting to see the yearly graphical improvements. Nowadays, they barely exist. Red Dead Redemption II, released six years ago for the PlayStation 4, might still be the best-looking video game on the market. This is all fine! Games do not need to keep making vast graphical improvements when they could instead be pursuing innovation in other ways. But watching Cerny’s presentation was a reminder that despite the giddy excitement over ray-tracing and reflective surfaces, the graphical improvements brought by the newest consoles on the market are insignificant. The $700 PlayStation 5 Pro will certainly appeal to tech aficionados with lots of disposable income who want to play games at 4K resolution and the highest frame rates possible. But most people will not be able to tell the difference between Final Fantasy VII Rebirth running on PS5 or PS5 Pro. It’s gorgeous either way. It’s enough to make you wonder: do we really need new consoles? The makers of PlayStation rely on continual iterations of hardware in order to grow their business, but how much longer will the appetite be there? The PS5 has failed to beat the PS4’s growth and is lagging behind it on sales, at least in part because so many players are sticking with older, less graphically intensive games, such as Fortnite and Grand Theft Auto Online, that can be played on the old consoles. (An industry downturn and a lack of big-name exclusive games also don’t help.) Meanwhile, rival Xbox seems to have given up on selling consoles in the first place… maybe? Nobody really knows what Xbox is doing. Meanwhile, the most popular console on the market is the Nintendo Switch, which has sold 143 million units despite having graphical capabilities equivalent to a PS4. Its successor, expected to be released next year, will likely also be underpowered compared to its competitors — and will also likely outsell them all. The Switch’s success stems from many factors, including the fact that it’s the only console that allows you to play beloved Nintendo franchises such as Mario and Zelda. But it also makes clear that the graphical arms race has a limited appeal, and that times have changed. The majority of video-game fans are no longer chasing the hottest technology above all else. The PS5 Pro doesn’t feel like the console of the future — it feels like the vestige of a rapidly disappearing past. I’m still making my way through Astro Bot, one of the year’s finest games and, not coincidentally, a technical marvel on the base PlayStation 5. You don’t need a $700 upgrade to get this game running at 60 frames per second — and it’s a delight to play. | 
