PS5 Pro Price Shock Eases for Buyers as GTA 6 Hype Builds
I bought the PS5 Pro on day one, and at launch it felt brutally overpriced at $699. Since then, it’s climbed to $899 following several price increases tied to component costs and a rough, shifting period for the wider game industry. Meanwhile, the standard PS5 models have also become more expensive, which makes early Pro owners feel like they got in at the “better” moment.
Still, for a long time I couldn’t shake the sense that the PS5 Pro mainly offered incremental wins: a handful of extra frames, higher resolution targets, and occasional quality-of-life improvements. What I wanted was a single, definitive experience—something that could remove the need for graphics or performance toggles—but that promise didn’t consistently land. PSSR also wasn’t quite where it needed to be, and I often ended up seeing a softer, muddier image that either demanded updates or pushed me to disable it outright.
That said, the situation has changed. The console only recently started feeling like it’s delivering on its pitch, and it might be arriving just in time.
PSSR Is A Game Changer For Console Gaming
Not long ago, Sony rolled out PSSR 2.0, and the impact on the PS5 Pro is noticeable. It doesn’t just tweak performance—it makes the system feel like a more premium piece of hardware instead of an “expensive maybe” upgrade. If you haven’t followed the tech, PSSR 2.0 relies on machine-learning reconstruction to generate a cleaner, higher-quality image than what the console renders in real time, with an approach that’s broadly comparable to AMD FSR and Nvidia DLSS, but limited to PlayStation.
Before these refinements, the results weren’t convincing. In games such as Alan Wake 2 and Star Wars Outlaws, enabling PSSR could make the picture worse, even when the frame rate looked better than on the base PS5. For a product priced like this, the trade-off simply wasn’t worth it, which made buyer’s remorse feel completely understandable. Now that the feature has been corrected, the outcomes can be genuinely impressive.
When I played 007: First Light last month, I quickly noticed the game didn’t lean on a bunch of visual toggles. Instead, it offered a steady 60 frames per second mode that looked and felt excellent. During the most chaotic action moments it can drop a few frames, but overall I was surprised by how good the visuals were while still running smoothly.
PSSR improves more than just resolution. It also does a strong job of tidying up the final image, reducing the jagged look on edges—especially on shadows, foliage, and characters. You might not always be looking at a native 4K feed, but PSSR often makes it seem that way for the majority of gameplay time.
Crimson Desert follows a similar pattern, where the performance option is the best route on PS5 Pro specifically because it leans on PSSR so effectively. I haven’t had the chance to test many other major titles yet, but Ghost of Yotei rounds out the list as one of the most striking games released over the past year.
It’s a reminder that the PS5 Pro can outclass other platforms when the reconstruction tech is behaving properly. And with component prices staying high, I expect more machines to adopt comparable strategies as hardware limits push developers toward smarter rendering. The big question for me, though, is how this will affect Grand Theft Auto 6.
GTA 6 Will Play Best On PS5 Pro Thanks To PSSR
Sony hasn’t been shy about where it expects Grand Theft Auto 6 to look and run best, and the messaging points clearly at the PS5. Rockstar is positioning the game with PlayStation as the lead platform, and branding will be used more heavily there than on Xbox. Since most players are on PlayStation and there’s no PC release announced at this point, it’s reasonable that the focus would concentrate on Sony’s ecosystem.
At this stage, I’m already preparing for the idea that GTA 6 will likely target 30 frames per second on both PS5 and Xbox Series X. That would let Rockstar pack the open world and characters with maximum detail, echoing what happened with Red Dead Redemption 2, which used the same resolution target. The Xbox One X version was native 4K at the time, and it was impressive—but it raises the question: can the PS5 Pro push things even further?
I think it can, or at minimum I expect Sony has been working closely with Rockstar to help GTA 6 take full advantage of the PS5 Pro. Why wouldn’t it? The PS5 Pro is the most powerful console on the market, and it should be able to make what’s widely expected to be the biggest game ever look its best—even if the frame rate remains at 30. There’s also a second possibility: the extra processing headroom could allow Pro users to get both graphical and performance-focused modes, with both benefiting from PSSR.
Rockstar has also likely continued optimizing its internal engine on today’s generation hardware over many years, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see that work pay off in a major way for GTA 6.
Just imagine stepping into Vice City for the first time again, but with every small detail rendered with sharper clarity—confident that your expensive console is doing everything it can to make it happen. I want characters to look stunning, violence to feel brutal and immediate, and the world to pop instead of looking like the hardware is struggling to keep up. Even on the base consoles, I expect the game will still look strong, because the systems are already older and Rockstar has a history of squeezing as much as possible out of the available power.
If you plan to play GTA 6 at launch—which, realistically, most people will—PS5 Pro is likely the best way to experience it. Rather than settling for only modest gains to image quality and performance, I believe PSSR is now mature enough to push the visual ceiling much higher.
Quick facts
- The PS5 Pro launched at $699, and later rose to $899 after multiple price hikes.
- PSSR 2.0 uses machine-learning reconstruction to output a higher-quality image than what the hardware renders in real time.
- Earlier versions of PSSR could make some games look worse, even when performance improved.
- With newer PSSR behavior, games like 007: First Light can deliver a smooth 60 FPS experience with strong visuals.
- The author expects GTA 6 to benefit most on PS5 Pro thanks to PSSR, especially if it supports enhanced modes.
