Sony
- The PlayStation 5, Sony's next-generation game console, is scheduled to launch this holiday season — and it's expected to be much more powerful than the existing PlayStation 4.
- Thus far, Sony has offered a first glimpse at the new console via its new DualSense gamepad, and a tech demo highlighted the technical prowess of the new machine. But we're still missing some crucial details.
- Here's everything we know — and a few major details we're still missing — about Sony's next-generation PlayStation console.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
The PlayStation 5 is almost here.
Sony's next-generation PlayStation game console is scheduled to arrive this holiday season, but we already know plenty of details about it right now: how powerful it is, its main features, and we've even gotten a good look at its new gamepad.
We're also still in the dark about some of the most important details, from pricing to what the console itself looks like.
Here's everything we know — and don't know — about the PlayStation 5 so far:
First: What we do know! 1. Games will look better than ever.Epic Games/SonyUnlike the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X — half-step consoles that offered more power in the same console generation — the PlayStation 5 "allows for fundamental changes in what a game can be," Mark Cerny, Sony's lead system architect, told Wired in April 2019.
Core to that mission is the new console's processing chips: a new central processing unit and a graphics processing unit from AMD. The former is based on AMD's Ryzen line, while the latter is part of Radeon's Navi GPU line.
What that means for you: The PlayStation 5 is built with bleeding edge hardware.
2. Games will load much faster.Marvel's Spider-Man
When you think of flashy new video game consoles, you probably don't think too much about hard drives — the thing you store games and game saves on.
But Cerny told Wired that the next PlayStation's hard drive is "a true game changer." Why's that? Because, for the first time ever, the next PlayStation will come with a solid state drive.
What's different about that? It's much, much faster than a traditional hard disc drive. In a demonstration of the new drive, 2018's "Marvel's Spider-Man" was loaded up on an early development kit for the next PlayStation — it demonstrated a reduction in load times from 15 seconds to less than a single second.
That indeed could be a game-changer. Just imagine all the time you've wasted waiting for games to load — now, imagine that being erased permanently.
3. It's capable of producing 8K visuals.VCG/VCG via Getty Images
8K? Yes, 8K — as in "the next step for television resolutions after 4K." And yes, you probably just got a 4K television. (Even more likely: You still don't have a 4K television!)
That's fine. Though the PlayStation 5 will apparently be capable of producing 8K visuals, we don't expect that any games will take advantage of that for some time. After all, there are barely any 8K sets available for sale, let alone a large audience of people waiting for 8K content. And that doesn't even get into the absurd price tags on the 8K TVs that do exist.
This capability seems more like a measure of future-proofing against what will come next rather than a new standard for visual fidelity.
4. It can produce a new type of visuals, called "Ray Tracing."Luminous Productions / Square Enix
Forget about 8K: What's this "ray tracing" business?
The long and short is it's a jargon term for what is essentially "more detailed, accurate lighting." A core component of video game visuals — like all other visual mediums — is how lighting is applied.
To that end, the PlayStation 5 will support the emerging form of virtual lighting.
5. It plays PlayStation 4 games as well as PlayStation 5 games.Sony
Backwards compatibility is a hugely important feature of any game console, and it's one that the PlayStation 4 completely whiffed. Sony is correcting that with the PlayStation 5 — your PS4 games will run on the PS5.
There's one caveat: When the new console arrives this holiday, it won't be able to play the vast majority of those games. Somewhere in the realm of 2.5% of those 4,000-plus games will work.
"We recently took a look at the top 100 PlayStation 4 titles, as ranked by playtime, and we're expecting almost all of them to be playable at launch on PlayStation 5," the console's lead architect, Mark Cerny, said in a video Sony published in mid March.
The company committed to further expanding out compatibility "over time" in a separate blog post. "We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5," the post said. "We have already tested hundreds of titles and are preparing to test thousands more as we move toward launch."
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
- Sony just delayed its big PlayStation 5 reveal at the last minute as protests rage in the US: 'We do not feel that right now is a time for celebration'
- These $50,000 tiny homes unfold out of shipping containers and can be combined into custom houses — see inside
- The PlayStation 5 will finally get revealed on June 4, with an event Sony is touting as a first look 'at the future of gaming on PlayStation 5'
