The absence of a 4K Blu-ray player inside the new PlayStation 4 Pro is due to a lack of consumer demand, according PlayStation boss Andrew House. Support cannot be patched in via a firmware update at a later date, either, he confirmed.

"Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend on video towards streaming," House told the Guardian. "Certainly with our user base, it's the second biggest use case for people's time on the system so we place more emphasis on that area."

Notably, Microsoft's recently released Xbox One S—which retails for the same price as the PS4 Slim—does feature a 4K Blu-ray drive, as well as support for HDR (high dynamic range) content.

While the PS4 Pro won't play 4K Blu-ray discs, it will support 4K streaming apps like YouTube and Netflix, as well as 4K games and HDR output. However, few games will actually run at native 4K, with many instead rendering at a lower resolution before being upscaled—a not entirely unexpected move given than even the most pricey of PC graphics cards can struggle with 4K.

Following Sony's press conference on Wednesday, Microsoft was keen to jump on the limitations of the PS4 Pro hardware. Its upcoming Project Scorpio console promises six teraflops of graphics performance versus the 4.2 teraflops of the PS Pro. Project Scorpio is "capable of delivering true 4K gaming," Microsoft said in a particularly gutsy statement.

The release of the PS Pro on November 10 marks a dramatic shift in how games consoles are sold, effectively putting an end to the traditional five-to-seven year architecture lifecycle that sees consoles quickly outperformed by PCs. This loss of players to the PC market, House claimed, is one of the reasons why Sony is releasing the PS4 Pro.

"I saw some data that really influenced me," he said. "It suggested that there's a dip mid-console lifecycle where the players who want the very best graphical experience will start to migrate to PC, because that's obviously where it's to be had. We wanted to keep those people within our eco-system by giving them the very best and very highest [performance quality]."

As for whether there will be any further instalments in the PS4 lineup following the release of the Pro, House wouldn't be drawn into specifics but did not rule the idea out.

"I think that since this is our first foray into this kind of mid-cycle innovation, it's far too early to call that," he said. "We think that for a really substantial period of time this is the PlayStation 4 lineup... We're 40 million units into this lifecycle. Our declared goal is to be a further 20 million units above that by the end of next year. At that point we've got a pretty good sense of where the momentum of the lifecycle is."