The PS4 Pro does have an appreciable bump in power over the standard PS4- it’s enough that developers can add extra enhancements to their games, visual effects and techniques that the standard PS4 simply would not be able to handle. At the same time, developers can also opt to just render the same game in a higher resolution- which is such a boring use of the added power.
Unfortunately, it also is the one that Sony seems to be pushing for. “Going forward we are highly encouraging direct support for 4K TVs and HDTVs, though we leave the specifics of how they do that up to the development community,” Sony’s Mark Cerny said in an interview with Digital Foundry. “They know best, but we really do want to see a higher resolution mode for 4K TVs and then some technique for HDTVs. It can be just scaling down from a higher resolution.”
It’s a shame, because I want to see that extra power used in meaningful ways. Then again, Sony is the company that made resolution wars and pixel counting a thing in the first place. So in a way, I’m not that surprised.
