Sony is preparing to unveil its next-generation console. The PlayStation 5, as it it’s officially called, will be Sony’s latest foray into gaming after dominating the current generation of consoles with the PS4.
The real question is how the new console will perform against its immediate competitor, Xbox Scarlett, Microsoft’s own next-gen machine, which boasts powerful specs and a few interesting features. And let’s not forget Google Stadia, which could be a big step into a future where players no longer need consoles at all.
But that future seems to still be a while off. Until then, we still get to obsess over the upcoming console war. Here’s everything we know about the PlayStation 5:
PlayStation 5 Dev Kit
In November 2019, we learned a bit more about the PlayStation 5 dev kit when images of the hardware sent to developers leaked online. You can see the image below:
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According to The Verge’s Tom Warren, the dev kit is “large and v-shaped is to make them more easily stackable for devs who are running multiple stress tests. The cooling is optimized to push air out of the sides and center.”
We should note that this will likely not be the final design of the console, so don’t get too attached to the look…
PlayStation 5 Release Date
Sony has confirmed that the PlayStation 5 will arrive in Holiday 2020!
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PlayStation 5 Games
Sony hasn’t revealed what launch titles we can expect from the PS5, but we’ll update this article as soon as we hear more about the console. For now, expect to play highly-anticipated titles like Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI on the platform.
PlayStation 5 Price
It’ll be a while before there’s anything concrete to share regarding the PS5’s price point. We likely won’t hear anything about that until the console is officially unveiled.
PlayStation 5 Specs
While Sony hasn’t confirmed the specific hardware components that will be used in its next console, we have learned a few things on the road to the big announcement:
The Basics
For starters: the PS5 will have a disc drive, according to Wired, which demoed the new hardware in April 2019. The console will also have an SSD drive, which could reduce loading times dramatically. More on that last bit in a second.
It will also feature a CPU based on AMD’s Ryzen line and a GPU based on AMD’s Navi, according to Wired. Sony has also confirmed that the PS5’s GPU will feature ray-tracing technology capable of rendering “complex lighting” and shadow like never before.
In terms of its optical drive, Wired confirms that the console will use 100GB optical disks and will also work as a 4K Blu-ray player. Sony has also teased that players will be able to just download certains parts of games if they choose, meaning that you could just download and install a game’s multiplayer or single-player mode, which should dramatically reduce the long download times currently on offer on the PS4.
As for output types, Sony confirmed that 8K visuals and 3D audio will both be supported by the PS5. And, as for graphics, the PS5 will have ray-tracing technology that should allow light and reflections to be rendered more realistically in PlayStation games than they ever have been before.
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Load Times
Just how fast are the PlayStation 5’s load times? During the aforementioned Wired demo, Sony exec Mark Cerny, who served as lead architect on the PS4, showed the outlet the same loading screen on a PS4 and a PS5 version of Insomniac’s Spider-Man title. On PS4, completing a “fast-travel” load between two in-game New York locations took 15 seconds; but on PS5, the same loading process took just 0.8 seconds. That’s sure to be music to many a gamer’s ears.
In May 2019, Sony showcased some footage of “next-generation” technology during a presentation in Japan. Sony did not refer to the technology as being directly related to the PS5 or whatever their next-gen console may be called. However, it’d be a surprise to learn that this demo isn’t related to existing PS5 technology.
The demo itself compared the loading times for a series of images running on the PS4 Pro to the same series of images running on next-generation technology. As is the case with many tech demos, you’ve got to take this demonstration with a grain of salt. It was a limited demonstration that didn’t include real-time game technology. The next-generation technology was also listed as being “under development,” which means this might not even be its final form.
Controller
Sony has revealed that there two innovations coming with the new PS5 controller. The first is haptic feedback, which will replace the usual “rumble” tech. “With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud,” Sony said in a blog post.
The controller will also feature “adaptive triggers, which have been incorporated into the trigger buttons (L2/R2). Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions.”
Sony confirmed that studios have already received a prototype of the new controller, so that they can start developing around the new features.
Backward Compatibility
Sony has confirmed that the upcoming PS5 console will indeed have backward compatibility, following rumors to that effect that have been floating around for months. This will be music to the ears of anyone that’s been building a nice library of games on their PS4 for years now.
Speaking at a totally exciting corporate strategy get-together, the same one at which Sony showed off the PS5 console’s amazing loading times, the company took the time to talk about its plans for backward compatibility.
GamesRadar quotes PlayStation boss Jim Ryan as saying, “Backwards compatibility, in a networked era, becomes something that is incredibly powerful. Because the gaming community is somewhat tribal in its nature, backwards compatibility gives us the opportunity to migrate that community from PlayStation 4 to next-gen using the ability to play the PS4 games they have on their next generation console – groups of 10, 20, 50 gamers. So we see this, given the size of the community that we’ve been able to accumulate over all these years and hard work on PlayStation 4 as a really critical success factor for us. We think it’s incredibly important.”
And deputy president John Kodera added this: “Cross-generation the community can enjoy the games together.” This seems to mean that you’ll be able to connect online, across the generation gap, with PS5 owners and PS4 owners playing together.
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Taking backward compatibility to a whole new level, Sony is imbuing the PS5 with the capability to carry over save files from the PS4. So if you’ve started a game on PS4, you’ll be able to transfer that progress over to the PS5 (when it comes out) and pick up from where you left off.
This exciting functionality for the upcoming PS5 console was revealed by Ryan in an interview with CNET.
“Whether it’s backwards compatibility or the possibility of cross-generational play, we’ll be able to transition that community to next-gen,” Ryan told CNET. “It won’t be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship.”
Ryan also notes, “This transition is probably gonna be more interesting than any other we’ve seen in the past. We obviously have one recently announced new entrant into the gaming space [Google Stadia] and the possibility of more to come. So the landscape is changing fast. If we simply kinda lean back on the world that we’ve known for the past 25 years, we’re at grave risk of having events around us overtake us. So we have to show an open-mindedness and a desire to do things to an extent that we haven’t had to in the past.”
One way in which Sony is showing its open-mindedness is by letting players take their games and their progress with them from PS4 over to PS5, saving users from paying twice for the same game and having to play it through again in order to catch up.
Matthew Byrd is a staff writer for Den of Geek. He spends most of his days trying to pitch deep-dive analytical pieces about Killer Klowns From Outer Space to an increasingly perturbed series of editors. You can read more of his work here or find him on Twitter at @SilverTuna014.