The whole point of Pro being $999.99 would be to specifically aim it at the Enthusiast gamers. You put it out of the relm of reasonable, to the point where the 90% won't even consider it. Just like people are fine buying a $2,000 4K HDR TV when there are $10,000 models available, most gamers would be perfectly happy buying the base PS5 for $499.99, and letting the enthusiasts dump their money into the $999.99 model.

When you are talking about the Enthusiast level consumer, they don't care about every peice of content delivering the best that their product can offer. This is often the case in Audio and Video, it takes years before even half the content starts to take advanatage of new tech. 

At the end of the day the Enthusiast PlayStation Gamer, will be perfectly happy with all SIEWWS games pushing the Pro to its max, with a small portion of 3rd party titles utilizing the power of the system. 

Something like a $399.99/$599.99 Base/Pro makes little sense. The Pro should be a truly Premium Product aimed at the Enthusiast Console Gamer. It shouldn't be a half baked effort with the Pro name slapped on it like we saw with the current PS4 Pro. Sony has been offering Enthusiast level products in every other catagory of products they produce. It is time that their most popular, and most profitable products offer the fan base a true enthusiast level piece of tech.

The fanbase are not clueless freaking sheep. 

There is no reason they can not launch a Pro from the start for the Enthusiast Fans, and release an upgraded Model in say 2023 with 5nm, and another upgraded model in 2026 with 3nm. Options are a good thing, and allowing Enthusiast PlayStation fans to upgrade more often is not a bad thing. 

Consumers are capable of critical thinking. If they are satisfied with the Base PS4 for the entirety of the generation, then that would be a perfectly suitable option. If a consumer wants to pick up the base model day one, and then consider a Pro in the future, that is another great choice. If another consumer wants to have the Pro Day One, and upgrade with every new Upgraded Model throughout the Gen, then that is a perfectly fine option as well.

Also there is no threshould in price. It is all about how many consumers you are trying to reach. If Sony wants to sell a PS5 Pro aimed at 50% of the Userbase, then they need to price it accordingly Maybe base PS4 is $349.99 and Pro is $499.99, if they are only looking at something that is aimed at 5% of the userbase, then they could consider something as outrageous as say $2,500. 

At the end of the day the consumer will decided. If the options are priced properly, then people will be happy buying within their budget. If they miss price the options, then people will feel like they have to drop the extra money for the higher end unit, and it will cause frustration and backlash. Sony should have a good idea of how this works, because they have been doing it with their TVs, Speakers, Receivers, Car Audio Decks, Phone, Cameras, and MP3 Players for Decades. There is no reason they can not have Base,  Mid, High, and Enthusiast level options in the PlayStation division.

If there are 2 different models it will be more like what we saw in previous generations like 60GB PS3, or Xbox 360 Elite.

An attempt at a more powerful PS5 at launch will be silly, raw powerwise there will not be much they could do to make major resolution or performance differences unless its compared to an intentionally gimped base system aimed a sub $399 entry point

This would be horrible marketing for the Playstation brand, particularly at launch. Maybe they could try this sort of thing once PS5 establishes itself but otherwise its launch will be met with hysteria surrounding the $999 version which would dominate the mind of consumers even if there is a cheaper option. Since the vast majority of people would only consider the cheaper option, the preimum at launch would also create a sense of discontent in consumers who feel like there're missing something. Better to just market the base system as the cutting edge technology of 2020 and everyone is happy. The console business cannot directly be compared to sonys other product, sony are selling dozens of TVs per year, consumers understand how differentiation works there, its expected. In the console space they're selling one or 2 core products for which branding has to be managed very delicately.

What microsoft done with the Xbox One X is essentially the right way to go about things. A $999 system would probably never make business sense because developers aren't going to utilise those specs beyond bumping up a few features and consumers have limited options in terms of peak resolution and performance. Essentially 4k/60fps is upper limits of what people care about, beyond that you're delving into niches that is not worth Sony's investment. They could pour that money into almost anything else and it would probably generate bigger returns.

A system optimised around ray tracing could make for a great premium device but doing that right means waiting for effective hardware solutions, otherwise sony releases a $999 system to support raytracing at 4k and then 3 years later GPU's are doing twice a better job at half the price. 

First off, responding to both of you. Not everyone that wants a high end gaming experience wants the PC experience. There are millions out there that will spend PC prices for the user experience of a console. Having a Unified Controller, Store, Online Network, and Trophy system, amoung other things across all Games, Software, and Services is a big draw for a lot of people. 

shikamaru317, you are correct that the base model needs to hold its own, and that is why this would work over what Microsoft was rumored to be planning. In this case the $499.99 Base PS4 would be a perfectly suitable console for 90% of PlayStation fans. The Pro would be best sold at an massive Premium like we see with Enthusiast level TVs, Recievers, Phones, Speakers, etc., most consumers buy low or mid range products, the enthusiasts are the only ones that buy the high margin products.

It is not that hard to sell this. If they price it right, they will put it out of the mind of the 90% of the audience. That is how every other product works. You offer improvements that matter to the 10%, and price it in a range that the 90% don't see the value in the minor improvements, and won't even take a second look. If the Pro is priced high enough, the focus will be around excitement for the Base PS5, while only the enthusiast gamers will even pay attention to the Pro.

Additionally, again, if they played this move correct, the Pro would be sold at a healthy profit margin. PS5 Base may cost $450 and sell for $499.99, while PS5 Pro would be something like $850 to build, and sell for $999.99. That is how business works with Enthusiast level products, with low sales volumes. This also gives them breathing room if they overestimate the demand for such a unit. If all goes well the make good profits on each one, if they are not selling what they produce, there is plenty of room to drop the price, and continue to profit on the unit, and spur more interest.

As for tech advanacing. That is always the case. The person going in to spend $999.99 on a console day one, or $10,000 on a Television, knows that in 2 or 3 years, a product that outperforms what they are buying will be available for less than what they are paying today. That is not an issue for this demographic. These are the people that will by the PS5 Pro X or whatever in 2023 that is another $999.99 investment. Why, because it offers the absolute best in console gaming, and they want to have the cutting edge experience.

think i would prefer a pro later on. Should be more powerful than a pro at launch. I don't mind upgrading, or just buying a second console for a different room.

I wouldn't hazard a guess as to the size of this potential audience, but I'm one of them to be sure.

I wonder though, if having a super-premium enthusiast model for a console, would engender a sense of frustration among those who have the vanilla version. I think there's something to be said about maintaining a state of equalibrium among a fan base.

There are pluses and minuses to both single unit and a multi tiered launch. It all partially depends on what MS is going to do. They say no more lower tier next gen console, but MS literally does the opposite of what their saying within days sometimes now, so. If both do it, it will just become the new norm, aside from unexpectedly low sales for one model over the years.

To make this specific enthusiast model really work, I think in a two model launch, you need pricing more like $399 and $749 for consoles. This way you won't have many early adopters upset that they can't afford either. That scenario would likely cause a lot of outrage and wouldn't be good PR for PS, especially that early on.

At $399, you get a very similar reaction to PS4's price unveiling. $749 will be enough that most $499 gamers and under won't really care as long as the $399 model is basically another upgrade over PS4 Pro, or better, with a few worthy additions. The $599 and $699 gamers will be the ones who need to decide what they want to do, but they aren't that big a crowd so they shouldn't make too much noise even if some of them aren't happy about the enthusiast model pricing.

This also would help to keep the performance gap closer. The larger the performance gap, the larger the concerns when it comes to how devs will handle that with their games. At the same time, the performance gap has to be high enough to be considered enthusiast worthy. $750 should be enough for most. The enthusiast model also doesn't have to be all performance extra's. There's plenty of media related items and more that can be added in, that your typical gamer isn't going to care about in the $399 model.

If MS were to launch just one $499 model, because I can't see them going higher and lower is highly unlikely if it's going to be a monster eater, yet PS launches two like stated here, as long as they can control and handle the proper implementation when it comes to the games, XB1 will look like a strong launch in comparison to how Scarlett fares.

I tend to think PS would try and go with a $399 and $599 approach if they were going to launch two reasonably different models, but it's hard to say whether they would take the chance on two regardless, other than storage space possibly. For me, two different performance models would be intriguing nonetheless.

Would be a dangerous precedent for consoles. First this and suddenly there will be options menus within games. Slippery slope.

This would be fine by me. Could go straight for the Pro without ending up with a superfluous console in my hands at some point.
Unless they go and do a Super Pro later, dang it..