Sony is reportedly investigating the PlayStation 5 Pro leak.
It’s important to point out that Sony has yet to confirm or announce that they will be releasing a PlayStation 5 Pro. We will report on some of many credible sources talking about this rumor, but this is necessary context, in case Sony cancels these plans, or it comes to light that the rumors were partly true and leaks were bogus.
There was a PlayStation 5 Pro rumor going around last year, which made reference to an internal codename for the console, which was, Trinity.
We reported on some detailed rumors about Trinity last December, but it seems the rumor pointed out here was much earlier, reported by a site called KeytoGaming from July 2023. Tom Henderson of Insider Gaming shared KeytoGaming’s report all the way back then, lending it credibility and also raising its visibility.
Tom tweeted this out today:
“As expected, Sony has launched an internal investigation into the leaked documents on Trinity as it leaked during a third-party rollout.
Not sure on the implications yet as I don’t think they can catch one individual, but Sony could reduce its third-party developer pool for new tech as a result.”
Tom’s implication is obvious; the leak for the PlayStation 5 Pro came from one of the third-party developers who were given dev kits, or at least advance information to make games optimized for the console.
Now, for what it’s worth, we don’t know how much of the Trinity rumors are true, or if all of them are true, as they don’t have conflicting information. But perhaps, Sony was just unhappy that their plans for a PlayStation 5 Pro leaked early at all.
In this case, it may or may now have been ultimately harmful to the console. While the industry generally gets criticized for keeping too many things secret, it absolutely makes sense to not disclose business plans a year or even months in advance. Rivals will then be able to plan around what they now know about them.
But on top of that, there’s a question of perception and managing consumer sentiment for Sony. This will be a challenging year for PlayStation, as they don’t really have any major single party AAA games to keep fans engaged, and also to make them money. Sony may have a core fanbase willing to buy every hardware they make as it comes out, but the real question is how much of their casual audience will trust them enough to buy this new console?
Many of the issues we had pointed out about just planning a PlayStation 5 Pro before remain true. Sony may find that they can talk up a good launch, but once again not make enough money for this project to be worthwhile in the long haul.
And perhaps that’s why they’re out on a witch hunt for someone who may have harmed their plans right there. As for us gamers, we can only hope these leaks didn’t come from a studio who makes games that Sony fans actually care about.
