When Sony revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro a few months ago, some wondered just how many people would be willing to spend $700 for a marginal upgrade to the already quite powerful graphical performance of the PS5. Now, initial sales reports suggest there's still a substantial portion of the console market that's willing to shell out serious money for top-of-the-line console graphics.
Circana analyst Matt Piscatella shared on Bluesky this morning that the PS5 Pro accounted for a full 19 percent of US PS5 sales in its launch month of November. That sales ratio puts initial upgrade interest in the PS5 Pro roughly in line with lifetime interest in the PS4 Pro, which recent reports suggest was responsible for about 20 percent of all PS4 sales following its launch in 2016.
That US sales ratio also lines up with international sales reports for the PS5 Pro launch. In the UK, GfK ChartTrack reports that the PS5 Pro was responsible for 26 percent of all console sales for November. And in Japan, Famitsu sales data suggests the PS5 Pro was responsible for a full 63 percent of the PS5's November sales after selling an impressive 78,000 units in its launch week alone.
© Kyle Orland
Bloomberg reports that Sony is "in the early stages" of work on a fully portable console that can play PlayStation 5 software. The device is still "likely years away from launch," according to "people familiar with its development" that spoke to Bloomberg anonymously.
The report comes less than a year after the launch of the PlayStation Portal, a Sony portable device designed to stream PS5 games running on a console on the same local network. Recently, Sony updated the Portal firmware to let PlayStation Plus subscribers also stream PS5 games from Sony's centralized servers at up to 1080p and 60 fps.
Sony's reported PS5 portable plans also come after months of rumors that Microsoft has also been working on a new Xbox console with a portable form factor. In June, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer added fuel to those rumors by directly saying, "I think we should have a handheld, too... I like my ROG Ally, my Lenovo Legion Go, my Steam Deck... I think being able to play games locally is really important."
© Sony
