Want A Better Gran Turismo 7? Don’t Buy A PS5 Pro

Let me start this by saying I’m unashamedly a Gran Turismo fanboy. Alongside growing up on Top Gear, I directly blame GT3 for my love of cars which ultimately led to a career where I get to write nonsense about them.

Gran Turismo 4 is, in my view, the single greatest game to ever exist and I’ll even go as far as to say GT7 is the definitive racing game of this generation. You can send all the abuse at me for that if you want, but it won’t change my opinion.

I’m also a day one PS5 user. Yes, I’m one of the silly ones who paid full-whack for an initial-run product that now has coil whine so heavily associated with the first batch of consoles, which is fine until you’re sat on a quiet menu and hear the sound of a wasp seemingly stuck inside the white behemoth on my TV cabinet.

In theory, then, the PS5 Pro should be the perfect thing for me. Here’s a more powerful version of the single inanimate object I use more than anything, that’ll allow me to play my favourite game at its glorious best. And without that stupid whine.

I must admit, I was intrigued. Until I saw that price tag. £700. Seven hundred British pounds. For those of you who deal in freedom currency, that’s about $915 at the time of writing this.  Even though you’re ‘only’ paying $700 there. Throw a disc drive and vertical stand into that, and you’re comfortably over £800.

Sure, sell your existing console for about £300-400 depending on how well you’ve kept it and you’re slashing the price, but that’s still nearly a whole new console’s worth of cost, and for what?

It looks as though Gran Turismo 7 in particular will be able to offer ray-tracing in-race at 60fps, something which so far it’s only able to offer in replays and at 30fps. That’s no doubt an achievement, but is it really worth that price?

Other games will benefit too, but as far as I can gather, those changes are going to be just as incremental. Frankly, I’m also not enough of a ‘proper’ gamer to care much – but when so many of these games are still able to run on a PS4, you begin to wonder how they’d perform if they were just built for the PS5 from the get-go. This whole generation seems to be lacking in true greats (although I’m yet to play Astro Bot. May Father Christmas be kind this year).

If you’re like me and the idea of a better Gran Turismo would be your main motivation for an upgrade, invest that cash elsewhere.

Don’t have a racing wheel yet? That’s your starting point. The game may look better with ray-tracing, but it’ll feel so much more involving using a wheel. I personally sunk a similar amount of cash as the PS5 Pro into a Fanatec GT DD Pro, and then some more for its more powerful boost kit, but you can save a stack and get a Logitech G923, with plenty for a decent rig to mount it to.

If you don’t really have the space for a wheel, already have one or don’t fancy it, your next option should be a PSVR 2. This isn’t cheap at about £530 RRP, but it’s so much more immersive than simply having some slightly better graphics.

This isn’t a purchase I’ve made myself, but ask anyone who has and they’ll tell you it's transformative to the experience. Actual game journalists widely tout GT7 as the showcase game for the headset, and they don’t often talk about racing sims.

Alternatively, spend that £700 on literally anything else. Buy a PC or a shitbox from Facebook Marketplace. Hell, treat yourself to a holiday. Just don’t spend it on a PS5 Pro, unless you have literally nothing else in life to buy. Give it two or three years and the PS6 will probably be here anyway.