Just days after South Africa’s PlayStation distributor confirmed the launch of the PS5 Slim in April, we’re hearing news of Sony’s next big thing: the PS5 ‘Pro’. This isn’t coming from Sony directly, of course. It’s coming, as everything that counts as ‘news’ these days does, from an unofficial source (it was leaked) — by YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead. And later confirmed by Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson.

Oh, and it’ll be arriving sometime in the holiday shuffle — to better target those Christmas wishlists — as long as it pumps out enough first-party titles, that is. Good thing Nintendo stood aside this year, huh?

Anyone familiar with the scene knows who Tom Henderson is, and that he doesn’t mess around. He verified that the documents seen in Moore’s Law is Dead’s video are the real thing, coming from a PlayStation developer portal — with the documents hitting relevant developers a few weeks back.

We won’t bore you with all the nitty-gritty details. This is a PS5 Pro, after all. It’s a PlayStation with hardware befitting the four-year gap between itself and the original console — one that’s reportedly being kitted out to best suit any customers picking up GTA VI when it drops next year thanks to its improved GPU that’ll apparently render up to three times faster.

A more consistent frame rate is expected at 4K resolutions, and there’s talk that its ray tracing capabilities could be three (or even four) times faster than the previous iteration. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR) has been rumoured to use Sony’s machine learning — similar to AMD’s FSR or Nvidia’s DLSS image upscaling features to possibly boost graphics up to 8K.

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Let’s settle this on LinkedIn…

Anyone against the idea of starving themselves to death probably has a LinkedIn account, perhaps against their will. Microsoft’s social platform has long been a place to go in search of jobs, or employees to fill those jobs — with everyone patting themselves on the back in the process. Now, the platform is looking to branch into gaming.

That might sound like we’re pulling your leg, but it’s true. The billion-strong userbase will soon be treated to at least three of the company’s in-house games; akin to the surge of simple internet games like Wordle or something from neal.fun. They’re called Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. It isn’t Linkle or something equally Wordle-y, so the NYT should leave them be.

The obvious implementation would be to allow employees to compete against one another, or against other companies. And, according to app researcher Nima Owji, that’s exactly what’s happening.

LinkedIn later confirmed in a message to TechCrunch that it was indeed working on a selection of games, though failed to provide any sort of release window. “We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” the spokesperson said in a message to TechCrunch.

It’s… a strange move. A website aimed at professionals, would-be or otherwise, succumbing to the pull of time-killing games — designed to kill company time? We hope it all works out.

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Sony hits the pause button on VR

Virtual reality (VR) isn’t for everyone, apparently. You’d think Sony, a company where the bucks flow out of every orifice, would find a way to make it work. But if the rumours are true, the Japanese conglomerate has hit the pause button on PSVR 2 production and begun stockpiling the headsets thanks to declining sales quarter after quarter. Yikes.

We’re just spitballing here, but we reckon the R15,000 price tag — or the fact that it requires a PS5 to work — might have something to do with the declining sales. Don’t even get us started on the lacklustre support for games since its debut, riding on the Horizon Call of the Mountain high ever since. The closing of the PlayStation London division, reportedly working on VR titles, hasn’t helped.

The company’s saving grace could be its decision to allow PC support for the PSVR 2 headset. Or it might continue to sink deeper into this mess, as more people flock towards the similarly priced Meta Quest 3.

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Google’s Gemini on Apple iPhones

AI might be coming to Apple’s iPhones sooner, rather than later. That isn’t thanks to a massive push to get Apple’s in-house AI out sooner, but because of a possible deal that’ll put Google’s Gemini engine on Apple’s devices, according to Bloomberg’s sources familiar with the matter. If the reports are true, Apple’s also explored the possibility of plugging OpenAI’s engine into the development of its next phone.

Whatever the case, we won’t be hearing about it until June at the earliest at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. It seems that nothing has yet been agreed upon between Apple and Google — with no ideas of how a partnership would work, or how the AI would be introduced to the devices.

Whether this will affect Apple’s long-rumoured plans to develop its own artificial intelligence in-house has yet to be seen. Just last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook was going on about the massive potential of AI, and that the company was investing heavily in the area in general.

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The PS5 is going Pro, bro

Quoting Sekran Toto, a games analyst and CEO of Tokyo-based Kantan Games, CNBC’s report mentions that “there seems to be a broad consensus in the game industry that Sony is indeed preparing a launch of a PS5 Pro in the second half of 2024.”

So, why now? Well, there are a couple of reasons. For one thing, Sony’s in a bit of a rut. Just last week, the Japanese conglomerate noted a massive drop-off in sales, resulting in the slashing of its 25 million-strong forecast for 2024 down to 21 million, according to Bloomberg (boo-hoo, Sony) Sony even went as far as saying the PS5 was on its last legs — barely three years after its release.

“Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” said Naomi Matsuoka, senior vice president. “As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware to start falling from the next fiscal year.”

And two; Grand Theft Auto VI. Yup, CNBC’s report reckons that Sony is looking to pump out a new piece of hardware to better accommodate gamers looking to pick up Rockstar Games’ when it eventually arrives in 2025. We’re not sure an entirely new console was necessary, but we’ll take it.

“And Sony will want to make sure to have a great piece of hardware ready when GTA VI hits in 2025, a launch that will be a shot in the arm for the entire gaming industry,” Toto finished.

Read More: The PlayStation Portal is coming to South Africa in February 2024 and it won’t be cheap

Despite Sony’s financial ‘troubles’ (if you can call them that), a new piece of hardware and what appears to be a very bare slate for 2024, George Jijiashvili, senior principal analyst at Omdia, believes Sony won’t be slashing the original PS5’s price tag anytime soon, even after the PS5 Pro’s release. This was in response to Sony’s comments, where it said its aim for gaming is to “optimize sales with a greater emphasis on the balance with profits.”

As for what a PS5 Pro might look like, nobody but Sony knows. We’re less concerned about its physical appearance — as long as it’s prettier than that atrocity we got in 2020 — and more worried about the sort of performance it’ll be repping. Rumours have been bandied about for months now, though nothing appears to be based on solid fact. We guess we’ll just have to wait — until the second half of 2024, apparently — and see.

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