What If Sony Had Made A PlayStation 3 Pro? How Powerful Would It Have Been?

[@tylertass9983]

Chad Warden… kids these days don’t even know

[@morelia619]

Abap

[@TheBcoolGuy]

dat ps triple

[@lottji]

ps triple!

[@crashpal]

Ballliiiiiinnn 🏀

[@SuperUltraGamerMan]

Datt PS TRIPLE BABY!!!!!!!

[@Pruflas-Watts]

If any generation needed PRO mid-gen refreshes, it was the 360/PS3 generation. Both could have benefitted heavily from 2 - 3 GB of VRAM, more memory bandwidth, and even that alone would have solved a lot of performance issues we had with most games running between 540 - 720p. We could have seen a lot more games with 1080p, high texture and locked 30 fps at a very minimum. Instead, we rode out the second half of that generation with 540p and 18 - 30 fps gaming.

[@Blazemaster9]

I loved running forge mode with a box of exploding barrels and one spawning and dropping in to induce perpetual lag and excesive heat! It was my space heater 😅

[@Parker--]

Michael Pachter was always right; where’s the Wii HD?

[@General_M]

@@Parker--what do you think the Wii U was?

[@davidsentanu7836]

​@@General_MThe Wii U was far too advanced for a Wii HD. Wii U was basically as powerful as the Switch.

[@rjgc725]

This is absurd. Systems are thoughtfully designed to be equilibrate and last for years. Pouring in high amounts of RAM on 2005 systems would have only helped for lazy developments eating RAM like it's nothing, like it's happening today. If you don't push the GPU and CPU you will not get any more performance, let alone jumping from barely holding 720p to almost doubling resolution to 1080p. This video would have been more interesting showing some testing on overclocked PS3s/360s.

[@gothpunkboy89]

If all they did was increase the amount of RAM in the console that probably would have lead to a noticeable boost in performance.

[@EbonySaints]

This. Since the 512MB of RAM was split down the middle for system and graphics, doubling it would probably have alleviated many of the texture issues that multi-plat PS3 titles had. That would have probably been fairly doable without bucking the cost too much by 2010. Other than that though, there really isn't a whole lot that Sony could have done to increase performance besides getting Nvidia to make a beefed up GeForce 7000 series or maybe relying on better yields to have the full eight SPUs on the Cell. The former would have cost a lot for Nvidia to bother with. The latter was just barely starting to be utilized properly by the end of the PlayStation Triple's life cycle and only by a handful of first party developers. The reason why the 360 did much better in multi-plats is because they went with three decent general purpose cores instead of Sony's one big core and seven specialized cores only three years after the first commercial multi-core processors released. Heck, it took until just a few years ago before developers really started to use more than four threads for gaming.

[@cinemapigeon4898]

Also to support party chat while playing a game, something the 360 could do but the ps3 couldn't.

[@e.l.4409]

​​@@EbonySaintsI don't think Sony or Nvidia would have done much to the RSX/G70 except increased the bus to 192-bit or the full 256-bit, and up the clock speed. May not have been worth the money or effort to double the shaders, ROPs, etc.

[@gamerrap23]

@@cinemapigeon4898the PS3 was capable of doing it, actually!

[@cinemapigeon4898]

@@gamerrap23 I know ps3 had party chat...but party chat while members of the party played different games at the same time? To my knowledge that wasn't possible?

[@skycloud4802]

I remember PS3 being a very experimental time with 3D, so a pro model would have helped massively with that as well.

[@crashpal]

And replace the cell processor lol

[@dsimpson530]

They took Dual HDMI out of the launch models since they realized most people didn't have 2x 1080p screens when HDTVs were more expensive. That would have been cool to have

[@MLPRainbowFantasy]

What would the point of a second screen be tho? Did the PS3 software allow for loading apps during gaming or something?

[@epobirs]

@@MLPRainbowFantasy Online multiplayer was still in its infancy for consoles and LAN parties were still common. The primary idea promoted was two player games in which each player had an entire screen to themselves. An expensive proposition when only a subset of the market was likely to use it and the same thing could easily be achieved via LAN with two consoles for those interested. A solution more costly for the customer but without added cost to each console manufactured for an underused feature. Sony likely considered it early on because it was already built into the GPU Sony was getting from Nvidia based on a PC product.

[@CeceliPS3]

That wouldn't make a difference though. Only yesterday I found out you could use 3- 5 PS3s connected via LAN to play 1 game in 3-5 screens. And not many relevant games supported that. It's one of those things you don't regret at all for not knowing it back then.

[@chris42069]

How did that get past R&D phase

[@RAZ9718]

It didn't. There was prototypes with two hdmi ports.

[@Axtmoerder]

Put a ssd in a ps, go digital only and you got your pro console Really it’s just amazing how fast games load (for example, dark souls 2 loads 20-25 seconds on dying or teleporting, with a ssd it’s 5 seconds) it also removes the texture streaming issues in a lot of ue3 games had

[@mimimimeow]

It's even crazier with the new VRAM overclock. Character switch in GTA5 becomes seamless.

[@IceKoldKilla]

But even with a SSD now, doesn't the PS3 not take that into account? It wasn't built to take advantage of SSDs. Same with PS4s.

[@myairspace121]

@@IceKoldKilla Pretty much. The PS3 tops out at sata 1 speed so so any ssd faster than that would not equate to a real benefit.

[@mimimimeow]

@@IceKoldKilla The max bandwidth is the same but SSDs effectively remove seeking times for random reads. Unlike HDD now the PS3 doesn't have to wait for the next spin or platter head to move around. It can load thousands of small assets quickly rather than a few at a time. It's the same reason why Windows on SSD or even SD card will make an ancient laptop much faster.

[@Hatecrewdethrol]

there's a reason a lot of recent games with demanding graphics list a SSD as part of the required minimum specs Someone did a video showing STALKER 2 on SSD vs HDD and while it can technically load on an old school disc drive it literally took 20 minutes

[@IceKoldKilla]

PS4 Pro was welcomed. I bought one and saw considerable improvements with visuals but more so with loading times and refresh rates. Also with how loud my PS4 was, I was happy to upgrade. My old PS4 also died months later after I sold it off. I took such good care of it, cleaned it, etc.

[@chrisbrown113096]

I loved my ps4 pro but let’s not kid ourselves thinking it was more quiet than a ps4 lmao

[@pengu6335]

​@@chrisbrown113096Depends on what model you had. I had a later model of the PS4 Pro & it's still dead silent to this day.

[@chrisbrown113096]

@@pengu6335 really ? Because I have the launch model but I had friends get one later on and all of ours sounded like jet engines and we cleaned ours. Bummer for us ! Lmao

[@crashpal]

​​@@pengu6335 same. I bought mine new and it worked total fine with very less noise that is unnoticeable from far away. The vanilla base version was the loudest one

[@awesomeferret]

The reason for the impact is simple: most games on Ps4 Pro are 1440p or higher, and most games on Ps4 are 1080p or lower. The difference between 1080p and 1440p is much more dramatic than the difference between 1440p and 4k (unless you have a huge 85+ inch TV obviously, which most people don't).

[@naywahn]

The PS3 was already steep $499/$599 and during a recession, it may also have cannibalized PS4 sales to some extent.

[@NextNate03]

PS3 wasn't anywhere near 499/599 during the 2008 recession. They where cutting features out of ps3 in 2007.

[@wingman-1977]

Not if it was released in 2009/10.

[@KingSigy]

The PS3’s price did absolutely nothing to cannibalize PS4 sales. Sony learned from its mistake and priced the PS4 at $400. It undercut Microsoft despite having a more powerful machine, too.

[@iamarabicandiloveamericanp7137]

​@@KingSigyif you are talking about xbox one being more powerful than ps4 that is not true, ps4 has more power than xbox one

[@victorvargas9330]

​​​@@iamarabicandiloveamericanp7137Agreed. Then came along the One X which was slightly more powerful than PS4 Pro. On top of that, ONLY the One X has 4K Ultra HD playback while PS4 Pro did not at the time.

[@mutalix]

I recall reading back in 2006 that the PS3 was first envisioned to have two cell processors within it one for the CPU and the other as a GPU, some complications later they instead with time running out towards launch went to Nvidia for their GPU needs. In the end though I am always reminded of the wisdom from that era, in particular: "Sony always wins, you can't beat Sony" -Sir Chad "pappi" of Warden.

[@mimimimeow]

A PS3 engineer mentioned that this wasn't the case. The original setup was 1 Cell, a relatively primitive GS-like GPU and 512MB XDR. Which theoretically would result in far better gfx performance, the same way the PS2 had crazy fillrate, but at the cost of repeating the same issues with PS2 development. Developers than asked for a more normal GPU. But it's pretty ironic that many years later we are going back to PS2-like ideas with Vulkan and DX12U.

[@Stevie-Steele]

PS3 was the Sega Saturn of the 2000s. Awesome potential but required absolute mastery of the hardware to create optimized games for it.

[@ILoveUEVR]

Except the Saturn was only superior for 2D games, mainly due to the extra RAM cartridge in real terms in my opinion (I bought a Japanese Saturn for all the great Marvel/Street Fighter and SNK games in the UK). Other than that, the PS seemed to win hands-down in pretty much everything 3D.

[@syrusse8660]

Xbox 360 was literally better on every point besides CPU computing, while that's good to have, you end up using that CPU just to compensate for the shitty GPU

[@NextNate03]

​@syrusse8660 R u sure about it? Specs of the PS3 says otherwise.

[@Ashen2501]

Modern PC games still requires absolute mastery, that's why we have a load of crappy releases, which requires a 'Day One patches', which weighs almost as a whole game you've just installed. And still after these enormous patches there's still no warranty that game will run smoothly on each and every PC ^_^

[@mikeg2491]

It shows in the library, the PS3 just pales in comparison to the amount of titles for PS1/2

[@toploaded2078]

The first pro console in my head cannon was the Atari 7800. Basically a 2600 that could play a few 'pro' enhanced games, yet stuck to the old sound chip architecture that meant it never felt like anything more than a beefed up 2600.

[@WujoFefer]

I think era with the best games was also era of worst performance... 15-20fps was very common... which was crazy because of the jump between "old" gen ps2 / xbox and ps3 / xbox 360... In that era PRO consoles with extra performance were needed the most...

[@NextNate03]

Your getting them mixed up with Nintendo 64.

[@richiboy6546]

​@@NextNate03 he is right. Games like bioshock, far cry 3, crysis or gta 4 had very poor performance on console

[@ThePreciseClimber]

@@richiboy6546 Bioshock & GTA4 ran pretty well on the X360. Far Cry 3 was a late release in 2012. And Crytek weren't really masters of console optimisation. In general, most games ran well on the X360 during the first half of that generation.

[@GarethFairclough]

PS1 > N64.

[@Ebalosus]

And that's the great irony of it: the games were better *despite* the lacking hardware performance.

[@reginaldbutterfranklin9424]

Thank you John for reminding people how bad games used to run.

[@seanmcbay]

The thing is that games from the PS2/GC/XB era mostly ran fantastically. It was a huge step backwards to get mostly 720p resolutions.

[@pgr3290]

The PS3 should have launched with an Nvidia G80. Delays to PS3 meant that the 8800GTX launched the week before PS3 did, which was immediately horribly dated GPU wise. They cut the G70 memory bus down to 128 bit which crippled memory bandwidth and limited them to 256mb of VRAM, their OS ate up a lot of it too until later in the generation. Imagine they launched with a custom chip only half an 8800GTX instead. 64 shaders, 192 bit memory bus, 384mb of VRAM. It would have been a massively superior machine.

[@ZackSNetwork]

The PS3’s weak GPU had nothing to do about launch of Nvidia’s GPU products. The PS3 originally was not going to have a GPU at all. However due to the PS3 Cell processor being so expensive already and them wanting to ship a year earlier they went with the cheapest Nvidia GPU that they could get a deal on. Nvidia just got over on Sony giving them a garbage product.

[@ZackSNetwork]

The PS3’s weak GPU had nothing to do about launch of Nvidia’s GPU products. The PS3 originally was not going to have a GPU at all. However due to the PS3 Cell processor being so expensive already and them wanting to ship a year earlier they went with the cheapest Nvidia GPU that they could get a deal on. Nvidia just got over on Sony giving them a garbage product.

[@pgr3290]

​@@ZackSNetwork The actual story goes that Sony wanted to use dual CELL processors, one as the main system CPU, and the second as the graphics accelerator. It became clear that this was not viable some ways into development. CELL was not great at general purpose CPU tasks nor graphics acceleration. It was a jack of all trades and master of none. Graphics hardware had become so specialized, expensive and difficult to design by 2005 only two companies built chips advanced enough to compete, ATi and Nvidia. Nearly everyone else had fallen away at the required performance level. Microsoft worked closely with ATi to build a custom design from scratch, getting something very advanced for 2005. Sony went to Nvidia to see what they could offer rather late in the day. They rummaged through their parts bin and offered up a crippled 7800GTX. Had Sony gone to Nvidia earlier and asked for a custom design, it's entirely possible they would have ended up with something a lot better. Then it got delayed anyway due to the Bluray drive and other issues. By the time of launch the DX9 GPU architecture in particular, the critical thing that drives graphics? Obsolete technology. PS3 overall just ended up a mess.

[@yujilee112]

​@@pgr3290​yep, i read it somewhere as well that they also created companion gpu for cell processor too but it's even less powerful than the one they end up using. but if they used that it might be better option, like 512mb of share memories rather than 2 different type of ram?

[@pgr3290]

@@yujilee112 Again that points to the Nvidia GPU being shoehorned into the machine quite late. In an original design 512mb of unified XDR memory could have been the plan. But changing to this GPU with no time to engineer the memory controller to use something like XDR necessitated the splitting of the memory pools, using the GDDR3 memory. It created this problem where realistically you had 256mb of VRAM while 360 was flexible to the point games could use as much as 300mb for textures in some games. PS3 nearly always had texture cutbacks on mutliplat titles.

[@watcheem]

Chad Warden, never let him be forgotten!

[@crashpal]

Ps triple be ballin

[@GhostOfSparta305]

The original 60gb PS3 fat WAS the PS3 Pro, essentially. Hardware BC across 3 generations is something we’ll never see on a console again, and I’m still salty consumers let Sony get rid of it.

[@General_M]

The Xbox series console plays 657 Xbox 360 games, and 61 original Xbox games. So we did see it again.

[@R323838]

@@General_M it's not the same, The PS3 BC for the launch models were purely hardware BC while the Xbox One/Series is emulation. But I got to give Xbox Credit for doing the emulation. That is what made me want a One X, The enhancements on the Xbox One games and BC made me buy the One X. As a gamer who mainly plays on PS, I wish they can still find a way to get PS3 games to work on current consoles or at least port the ones that didn't get remastered.

[@GhostOfSparta305]

@@General_M Not even remotely the same. The launch PS3 literally had a PS2 built in, and could play pretty much every PS1/PS2 game. Xbox’s solution, while nice, is all software emulation.

[@General_M]

@@GhostOfSparta305 who cares if it’s emulation, it still works doesn’t it? I don’t get why people always have to find a fault with everything. The series consoles has 3 generations and change with backwards compatibility but that’s not good enough for you because it’s emulation. Get real.

[@runehakonhelmundsen9225]

You gonna see it again with ps6! It’s probably gonna be backwards compatibel, and since ps5 is backwards camptibel with ps4, by default ps6 has to go back to ps4 to..

[@PFS97]

A retrospective on Unreal Engine games on PS3 would be fascinating

[@MerryBlind]

I wanted a PS3 Pro so bad back then. I kept thinking why don’t companies do this??? I probably wouldn’t have gotten into PC gaming towards the end of that generation if they had done a Pro.

[@Howitchewstofeel5gum]

Thank you for addressing all the whining about performance nowadays, when this current gen actually performs vastly better than the two before it

[@RpgAddict325]

People nowadays will always find something to complain about. People are never happy with anything.

[@damiank9443]

Full fat G71 on the start would be nice change with higher clock speed, wider bus and more memory. Overclocking RSX to G71 levels and memory to ~850 brings nice boost in performance as GTAV keeps 30 fps with occasional drop of 2-3 fps. G80 ofc was out of the question. Too big. But something similar to G94 with lower clock speed was actually possible imo. It would give huge boost in performance thats for sure.

[@MazdaChris]

I think the problem is that it was before the majority of console games had really truly scaleable game engines. So it would have meant a lot of overhead for developers to optimise for two different console specs (on a platform that was already notoriously difficult to work on) for the sake of what would have been a really small potential customer base. There's a reason why console makers moved away from exotic bespoke hardware and towards PC derived chipsets. I don't think it would have made financial sense at the time, even setting aside the economic challenges we were facing.

[@mimimimeow]

The real problem was they had little documentation and abstraction from the hardware. If Sony had something like abstract APIs that simplifies how PS2 VUs and PS3 SPEs were utilized, it'd have been non-issue. Instead devs had to work in freakin assembly and copy others. I remember engineers back then saying that getting the PS2 to output anything was a massive pain at the beginning.

[@MazdaChris]

This is the thing with using bespoke hardware. I agree Sony could have made the lives of developers easier by giving better support, but it’s still a bit of a developmental dead end. I suspect that a PS3 pro with radically different hardware specs would likely have brought a whole raft of new challenges and optimisation techniques. It’s not like today where you would just choose whatever detail settings etc give the best visuals for the performance target. UE3 was great on PC but very poor on PS3 because the platform required solutions that were engineered specifically for the hardware and its idiosyncrasies.

[@mimimimeow]

@@MazdaChris Yeah and nah.. I mean sure bespoke hardware made it hard, but so is every PC GPU architecture. The only reason PC devs aren't struggling is they have layers upon layers of abstraction. Drivers, DirectX/OpenGL, Windows itself and all sort of libraries. With PS2 and PS3 it was down to the metal.

[@adonian]

Now they've got me thinking about a PS1 or PS2 Pro

[@crashpal]

The PS2 slim could be considered a pro since it included network support from get go and was very quite

[@ZackSNetwork]

A PS2 Pro would have matched the GameCube and Xbox. Along with significantly more theoretical polygons and better fog effects.

[@davidsentanu7836]

@@adonian The Wii is basically a PS2 Pro. It's a Gamecube in disguise.

[@pengu6335]

@@davidsentanu7836 Literally an overclocked GameCube lol.

[@prince_thomas]

I always wanted a PS2 Pro. The main addition would be HDMI and a hardware upscaler. I thought there was value in extending its life into the era of HD TVs. Could have also used a HDD and some extra RAM. Then PS3 would come a bit later and also have more RAM than the one we got.

[@wallingtoncruceta4458]

Ps3 pro? Just remove the disc drive 0:45

[@brianpbillingsley3687]

😂

[@urazoktay7940]

Amazing video, thank you Digital Foundry.

[@36iRealisedImOldToday]

The binning would have been better at that point so activating the 8th core on the CPU, putting in a beefier version of the GPU, having 384 + 384 banks of memory giving it 256mb extra.... or even going 256 + 512. Upgrading it to sata 3 so you could use an SSD and get actual improved load times and asset streaming.

[@marioe.4400]

4:14 - And for Brazil that concept equates to a lifetime (PS2), with its amazing homebrew scene.

[@KamaniBrown]

I experienced the dreaded yellow light of death 😢. Was a sad day being a jobless kid in high school who saved up for that 80gb PS3 a few months after launch. A Pro was needed fr.

[@queens2nd2none]

Remember the N64 Pro? I needed it to play Rogue Squadron 😮‍💨

[@mondodimotori]

6:45 Don't worry, there's lot of bad stuff even on PS2. San Andreas, the top selling game on the system, was 25 FPS tops. Unstable. I played lot's of third party games, and most of those ran pretty badly. Or just became unplayable once the disc scratched even a little bit. Yeah, looking at you Most Wanted and GT4.

[@balthazarbulau4095]

Finally, an interesting subject way better than talking about ray tracing and other gimmick that people need a magnifying glass to see it.

[@archivey-h8e]

Lol it's cute people think path tracing is a gimmick.

[@joncarter3761]

Bayonetta on 360 was a mostly flawless 30 FPS experience at 1080p, the PS3 port however struggled to stay at 30 at 720p. I think both would have benefited from a mid cycle pro console but I would say the PS3 was in more need of it.

[@Firealone9]

Such a short video I wanted an hour long discussion on this one

[@gcrackerz]

I think it's just a snippet from a full podcast

[@Firealone9]

@gcrackerz Do you know where I can find it?

[@90fuso]

@@Firealone9 it's in the description, but the full podcast is not only about this topic.

[@craigsurface9147]

We went from sub 480p resolutions to 720p. It was good enough already at that time.

[@mimimimeow]

A more plausible question is what if Sony designed the PS4 with PS2/3 die size budget? I think they could fit Phenom X6 and R9 380X/GTX970 in there lol

[@phawxhunter]

If they putted 1GB RAM, increased the CPU clock, faster GPU, and SATA II interface, the PS3 Pro would've been the GOAT.

[@H4VOK_YT]

A 60fps ps3 would have been beautiful

[@crashpal]

And replace the cell processor

[@H4VOK_YT]

@@crashpal bro that aint a ps3 anymore thats an entirely new console then how the hell are the games gonna run without it 😭

[@archivey-h8e]

That would have also been $1000

[@H4VOK_YT]

@@archivey-h8e extra 512mb, increased cpu clock and sata II interface would've litterally cost them like 20 bucks. The gpu is the only problem but it depends what gpu it is

[@PSYCLOWN185]

I'm so glad you guys point out how bad performance was in the 7th gen. People just do not know what they are talking about when they bash these consoles now.

[@lottji]

7:27 The first two Arkham games ran extremely well on PS3 for being unreal engine games tho

[@36iRealisedImOldToday]

What if Microsoft made an Xbox Pro.... 1.4ghz P3, 128MB Ram, higher clocked Geforce 3..... They could have delayed the 360 another year and sorted out the RROD.

[@blaketindle4703]

That Half Life 2 port would have ran great with those console specs.

[@damiank9443]

@@blaketindle4703 with only CPU upgrade HL2 runs like it should.

[@epobirs]

Absolutely not an option. Microsoft had mixed ideas about how things would be done during the development process and ended up with a supplier situation with Nvidia that a console maker would never choose normally. Microsoft was accustomed to creating platforms that would be licensed by hardware makers who'd each deal with the chip OEMs on their own. The PC market and MSX for examples. For a long time, it was thought Xbox would also be like that, with models from several vendors like Dell and HP, and consumer electronics brands like Samsung. This was with the then recent failure of 3DO fresh in everyone's memory. As it ended up, Microsoft was paying too much for the chip set of the Xbox and couldn't go shopping for a better deal at other foundries for reducing the cost of those chips. Normally, a console maker owns the custom chips in the system and other chips are highly commodified. For the Xbox, if MS wanted a die shrink of the GPU, it had to deal with Nvidia and nobody else. (Microsoft did get an emulation license for the GPU, which enabled them to support Xbox games on Xbox 360 at low cost.) This was why the Xbox ended production well before the Xbox 360 launch. Every unit sold was at a significant loss. Purchasers would have to buy a LOT of new games to make up the difference before there was any profit. They screwed up and they knew it. It was time to move on. Interestingly, the Xbox could easily have had 128MB RAM. The pads were there on the motherboard. Microsoft hit a date when they had to make a decision based on chip prices at that moment and went with 64MB. That alone would have allowed for a lot better PC ports and originals, having five times as much RAM as the PS2. There was a lot of untapped potential there with the existing CPU and GPU.

[@edwarddavid7893]

If my grandma had wheels she'd be a bike.

[@Tomtycoon]

A PS3 pro is called the ''Wii U''

[@DragoniteSpam]

I like to call the PS3 era the Awkward Teenage Years of gaming. They were interesting, but I'm definitely glad to have moved past from then.

[@airforcex9412]

PS3 was a PITA to program for. Although it’s relatively easier to scale up, it’s still more work for programmers. 360 was the lead development console back then.

[@SeanUCF]

Sony's strategy for the PS3 was just to produce the best image quality they could even if it meant playing the game with static images.

[@markvicferrer]

More power would be a given, but I don't think they could resist adding yet another layer of complexity to the whole thing.

[@e.l.4409]

Alright, this is how i think Sony would have made a PS3 Pro. CPU: Cell processor clocked to 3.5-3.6GHz, 8 SPEs enabled. Starts at 45nm. GPU: Basically the RSX but with the full 16 ROPs from the 7800GTX. 256-bit bus. Clocked at 600MHz. Starts at 65nm. RAM: 512MB GDDR3 RAM for the GPU. XDR RAM might still be 256MB, depends on pricing. Storage: 320GB HDD at launch. Launch window: Q4 2010 or Q1 2011. Cost: $499 US DOLLARS

[@theparkbopper]

Frostbite was really good on PS3. I can’t imagine how developers would have embraced a pro console at that point being that it was so difficult to program for the PS3 anyway I agree with all the points made but because there was no common PC architecture adopted yet I don’t think it would’ve been embraced as it is now

[@thebatfan89]

I'd buy a PS3 Pro today if they released one. I'd even buy a brand new standard PS3 if they started manufacturing again.

[@ekinteko]

Sorry but this is a dumb question! The Cell Processor was not being mass produced as fast as people think, there were stock shortages early on, despite the "high" cost at the time. Coupled with the bad titles early on, and the ongoing recession.... well the PS3 basically had a stunted launch. On top of this, the Xbox 360 and PS3 were kind of over-powered as Home Consoles. Especially for their retail price. Even thifty PC Gamers could not compete, not until years later and technology went through some big evolutions. It took until 2010 and the release of the refined and cheaper PS3 Slim, with a handful of great titles.... only then was Sony competing. And it was around this era the PS3 and slightly slower Xbox 360 were delegated down from "high-end" to "mid-range" gaming machines. A PS3 Pro was not necessary for Sony. In fact, it would've made things WORSE not better. It is what Sega did after the launch of the MegaDrive and it diluted their brand. Sony did learn some valuable lessons and passed these on to the PS4: better software, easier to develop hardware, cheaper cost, plenty of RAM, enough Storage. But they did do a couple anti-consumer (or Pro-Business) moves too with locking down their Accessories, Gimmicky features (lightbar, touchpad), and lastly Paid Online Subscription. Sony also did not have a strong lineup of titles, but things improved in late-2016. The PS4 also was fairly under-powered for its time, which necessitated having a mid-gen "Pro" refresh. Overall, the PS4 was a meh release. The PS5 has many strengths. But what it lacks sorely the most are games. There arent any great games for it. No must haves. Or system sellers. Exclusives. TLDR: Sony has evolved with the times. They were most competitive in the PSOne era. They didn't errode the momentum, but used it to launch PS2 into the history books. It was the PS3 where they made blunders (availability, price, development tools). They fixed their shortcomings with PS4, but did so while having more Business Profits. The PS5 launch was great, but nothing to show for it, and have swayed to anti-consumer practices. The industry for gaming as a whole has not being very healthy for the last decade, and we will see the ramifications of this for the future.

[@pengu6335]

Most of what you said here in true. However, PS4 wasn't really "underpowered" when it launched. PS4 has aged better than any other console ever made. PS4 is still getting games & performs "decent" in them games for how old the hardware is now. Hell, the GTX 700 series from PS4's launch (not including the 750ti) aged horribly. They dropped driver support for them cards a few years back or so. PS4 was already outperforming them cards around 2016 or so, mainly because of the lack of actual support for Kepler cards.

[@spiral1407]

​@@pengu6335That's only because it sold like 120m systems, which forced Devs to continue supporting it. The actual hardware is very underpowered

[@pengu6335]

@@spiral1407 That's really a mute point. It has outlasted the PS2 in game support at this point, despite selling less consoles.

[@spiral1407]

@@pengu6335 No? PS2 got its last game almost 13y after launch

[@bsd107]

Ironically, the Phat PS3 launch 60GB model was the best model they ever made…

[@chris42069]

Performance in some games was terrible, it was the era when developer ambitions vastly outpaced consoles ability to deliver. But the games themselves hold up incredibly well, if you emulate using RPCS3 you basically get to see what the devs ambition actually was. God of War 3 is an absolute masterpiece

[@GarethFairclough]

I can see it now, the G80 wouldn't have gone in. Instead, Sony might have gone for a dual G70 setup via SLI. Actually, I think this might be really interesting for a documentary, ngl. Bring in engineers from the era to talk about it?

[@pboogity8309]

5:07 I have gotten both ylod and rrod twice and only once in total during the warranty. Sad times lol

[@mikeslemonade]

Ps3 needed a pro. Gamers hating on the pro versions. I think they’re completely necessary. I remember how slow my ps3 got in the middle of the generation.

[@kirishima638]

The PS3 was ‘pro’ on launch, just too difficult to develop for to its full potential. The PS4 Pro only exists because the base hardware was weak on launch.

[@crashpal]

@kirishima638 backwards compatible with PS2 games. Had the 60gb launch one and it got yellow light of death 7 years later

[@JackInABeanstalk98]

ps3 hardware was middle range on day one due to Sony's delay. even then, 7 year life cycle

[@MyNameIsBucket]

What a PS3 Pro would've looked like to me: - double the system RAM. more video RAM probably would've been prohibitively expensive. - upgrade the GPU to the latest DirectX and OpenGL. probably don't need much specs-wise because compression and API performance would be a huge leap already. - upgrade the drive interface to SATA II so people can take advantage of those newfangled solid state drives. - if i wanted to get fancy, slap a low-power SOC in there for the playstation OS so that games can use the Cell exclusively.

[@majorasspain5341]

The ps3 did use sata lol.

[@escape209]

Would have all come down to developer support, and having games actually be able to scale to a Pro model's specs without the game breaking. Then again, to my dismay, people are actually buying the PS5 Pro, for some reason, so maybe they could have just slapped a 750GB HDD in there, called it "Pro", marked it up by $200 and it would've flew off the shelves. If people will pay $80 a year for EA Sportsball (insert year here), they will buy literally anything. People never cease to disappoint me.

[@Oni64]

PS3 Pro would have been 1GB of ram?

[@anthonyrobinson3514]

I know one thing I like that silver colored console!

[@segasdreamer]

A PS3 Pro to me would've been 720/60 gameplay. So many titles were sub 720p and had bad frame rates. So whatever it took to make games native 720p with solid frame rates I'd ask for it.

[@realsong-fake]

Sony would regret it immensely if they made a PS3 Pro. They are so happy to leave the free online gaming feature behind and it's probably the greatest success they achieved with PS4 which is forcing you to pay for online.

[@NotOrdinaryInGames]

Considering God of War Ascension and inFamous 2 and Uncharted 3 exist......... I really don't care, this was less of a hardware limitation and more of a developer learning curve. PS3 Regular Edition was FINE.

[@spawnkiller9779]

It would have been interesting if they released a version where all cores of the cell processor were active and gave the system a few gigabytes of ram . The pro model I could see a possibility where it's the same resolution and everything just maybe better ainti aliasing and more consistent frame rate.

[@XV-IV]

FINALLY SOMEONE TALKS ABOUT THIS, THANK YOU GUYS

[@FollowingStorm0]

PS Triple Professional would be BALLIN!

[@jm036]

G80 would've obsoleted the Cell SPEs entirely. I wouldve replaced the CPU for that PowerXCell 8i and put more RAM. XDR was a mistake cause rambus gonna rambus. Although GPGU had already obsoleted the Cell architecture, it was a dead end by 2009.

[@MohammadAli-jd8ub]

I always wanted a PS3 Pro even if they make it now I’ll buy it day one

[@mitchjames9350]

Sony should have started off with making programming for it easier and increased the memory size and speed.

[@Lauren_C]

They should’ve held off the launch a but longer and launched with G80 and C2D. Would’ve been amazing.

[@GTR24]

I want a PS3 Super Duper Slim with the PS2 emotion engine, 8gb of RAM, 4gb VRAM and a 1tb SSD

[@GTR24]

Also needs to be compatible with a Dual Sense 5

[@floridahighwaypatrol7713]

It would’ve been about as powerful as a mid to high range GPU by 2009 standards.

[@ZackSNetwork]

A PS3 Pro would have had 1gb of ram split between the CPU and GPU. Instead of 512mbs. It would have had the same CPU just clocked slightly higher. The GPU would have been on par with the Wii U. Which was between %50 to 2x the GPU of the Xbox 360. Along with a $500gb hard drive for $600.

[@awesomeferret]

It would have been about as powerful as a Wii U. I'm baffled that I'm apparently the first one here to make that comparison.

[@ZackSNetwork]

Arguably more powerful. Because the Wii U was heavily bottlenecked by its memory bandwidth, slow CPU memory and weak CPU.

[@toploaded2078]

@@ZackSNetwork Yeah I was gonna say, the Wii U was baffling in that it was in some ways behind The PS360 consoles, even though it came out on the cusp of the next generation. Many multiplatform games at the time ran worse on the Wii U than those ageing machines. One of the many reasons it was such a hard flop. I still love it though.

[@bralod4903]

Definitely should have named it PS Triple

Visually peak 360 games just didn't match up with peak PS3 games. Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 were mind blowing. Didn't see that type of thing on 360

[@AzaiaMonota2]

I'd argue that Gear of War 3, Gear of War Judgement, Halo 4, and Titanfall look better

[@wingman-1977]

The PS3 had a way more powerful CPU than the 360’s one. It was that the 360 was easier to develop for. Basically, the best looking games for it was the PS exclusives.

@@AzaiaMonota2 I played both back in the day and Killzone was doing things Halo 4 just wasn't even close to doing.

[@AzaiaMonota2]

@@wingman-1977 Don't forget Xbox 360 also had double the VRAM of the PS3

[@wingman-1977]

@@AzaiaMonota2 True that.

[@light3267]

got my ps3 frankenstein with a rsx40, felixrip has a youtube video on overclocking it making it a ps3 pro

[@CeceliPS3]

Do you think that mattered? I'd be down to pay someone to do that on my Fat PS3, but I don't think you'd get even 5 FPS more. LOL. I'll go search these videos to confirm it.

[@jackncoke171]

Imagine if Microsoft had launched the Xbox 540 in November 2009. Would have been amazing.

[@MoonSarito]

I think it would be as powerful as a Wii U. (at least in terms of RAM and GPU)

[@MrDarni187]

Ridge Racer 7 (PS3 Launch title) 60FPS 1080p says Hi 🤠 to all the PS3 haters lol

[@obscurelight]

Overclocked rsx ps3 + cfw are basically the pro version of the ps3

[@ibeatson5839]

would say if they intended for one it would have went like the psp 2000 with its increase of ram (and also for the og psp change the cpu speed cap also for the og psp) so woud have been a gpu speed bump and ram in the same way

[@3wA_TroCon]

Honestly though, the PS3 had far fewer rates of YLoD than 360's RRoD.

[@Hitchens91]

I’m half surprised that Alex didn’t suggest RT implementation.

[@epobirs]

In terms of the die area made available by the multiple die shrinks, that opens up the possibility of a long list of areas that could be improved. If the PS4 were chosen to be a directly backward compatible design, there would have been plenty to work with there. But that gets to the real problem: almost nobody wanted the PS3 platform to continue except for those who'd made coding for the CELL BE their lives. The vast majority wanted to move on to a more mainstream design. It wasn't for lack of opportunity so much as lack of desire. Even so, this is an interesting thought game to play going all the way back to the beginning of game consoles. Some evolutions are obvious in that they effectively existed, such as the Atari 2600 VCS and the chip set (6502, ANTIC, POKEY, GTIA) in the 8-bit computer line and 5200 console. Likewise for the Commodore VIC-20 and Commodore 64. Fans of both used to look to Apple ][GS and wonder what could have been if their preferred 8-bit platforms had gotten similar treatment. Another example is the NES and SNES. The SNES was originally intended to be backward compatible with a separate cartridge slot for NES games but this was shot down when Nintendo finally accepted there was nothing they could do to prevent the resale of used games. They briefly had the law on their side in Japan but that didn't last long enough to influence the Super Famicom design. For Sega, the Genesis needed to offer BC because the Master System had failed badly in the US and retailer weren't going to touch a new Sega console that didn't offer a solution to the inventory of Master System games they had on their shelves. The Master Base converter was just and adapter for the edge connectors of the Master System carts and cards. The Genesis itself was fully capable internally of running Master System games. While the Genesis never had an official 'pro' style upgrade model, there was the SNK Neo-Geo. In many ways, this was the Genesis on a higher budget. A LOT of similarities under the hood. A directly compatible Neo-GEO Pro running a 60040 and beefed up graphics subsystem would have been interesting to see. The Hyper Neo-Geo 64 was an entirely unrelated design.

[@waaghals]

The problem with the PS3 wasn't even the Cell processor, at least not mainly. It was significantly less available memory for games, a much lower fillrate and a worse GPU.

[@theelitedragon2xx]

The ps3 was already powerful with the CPU Cell processor all it needed is more ram

[@8bitnation419]

Upgrade the Cell processor to the Perfect Cell Processor

[@BunnyslippersEUC]

Heavy Rain had horrible screentearing. Uncharted Drakes Fortune had terrible screentearing. Infamous 2 had very low resolution post-processing efffects. But still looked fantastic. Resistance Fall of Men looked very clean and smooth at 30 fps. But the art-direction was not good. I love the gritty look of Resistance 3. The snowlevel looks insane still.

[@madfinntech]

4.59 Yeah but in nothing in scale of 360's red ring of death.

[@AlexanTheMan]

More games would've actually run at 1080p.

[@solaris_]

PS2 PRO/ iteration for the next 20 years

[@DriverX-JDM]

Honda for the winnnnnn!!!!❤❤❤🎉🎉🎉

[@DirtyMike_n_theBoyz]

All it needed was sata 3 and the ps2 hardware added back in

[@Warren_Flatt]

PS3 was already pro from day 1. the subsequently revisions made the console less pro.

[@CeceliPS3]

I've gotta say... I've got a 4090 and I hate consoles, but I do own a Fat PS3 for the exclusives. Maybe I'm nostalgic about it or maybe I just don't want the hassle of the RPCS3. But the only way I can excusve not playing with high FPS is the PS3. John have said that - perhaps in general - games are much better on PS5 today, but bro, c'mon, some struggle hard to mantain 40 FPS!! Hahahaha. If we're going down this path, get a freaking PC already instead of those stillborns. The only reason to try to cope with bad frame rate is if you're playing on a PS3.

[@vivi1649]

Wish Oliver asked Mark Cerny how he would have done a PS3 Pro

[@THEdemetrishigashikata]

It'd be able to play Final Fantasy 13 series without crashing

[@AZNHELLCAT]

The 60gb ps3 model is the PRO❤

[@AdamAdamHDL]

1gb of RAM on release, ditch all the bs extra ports. Actual permanent backwards compatibility... and tadah. Everything PS3 should have been.

[@sulaymanhamid6628]

No that, Digital Foundry Is the right question

[@The_Juggla]

In short: It depends.