play station 4

The PlayStation 4 Pro is essentially a PS4 with better hardware inside that's designed to improve the performance and visuals beyond what's currently possible on a standard PS4. Not every PS4 game can take advantage of the Pro, but it will play any PS4 game you throw at it.

A regular PS4 game will need a downloadable patch to support the PS4 Pro's upgrades, but it's still unclear what exactly each patch will provide. For any given title, a Pro update will bring some or all of the following enhancements: better frame rates, higher output resolution, better textures and HDR support. That latter feature, however, is also available on the non-Pro PS4 consoles following a September software update. Judging from the updates we've seen so far, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason in regard to which games get what.

Only a small number of games with Pro patches were live for us before review time, but Sony promises that 30-plus games will have Pro patches at launch, totaling 45 by the end of 2016. Starting next year with games such as Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone and Mass Effect Andromeda, you'll start to see a "PS4 Pro Enhanced" badge on the box art of games that have Pro support already built in. Sony says that almost every game released on PS4 from here on out can have Pro perks