Finally, Sony PlayStation 5!

The president and CEO of the company, Sean Lyden, in an interview limited himself to the vague wording that “one day we will find out the release date of the PlayStation 5” …

Spring-summer 2020 clarified a lot about Sony’s next-gene issue. And after a very strange presentation on June 1, there were even fewer puzzles. However, as the bosses of the Japanese corporation insisted, the paradigm has changed in place with the new generation of gamers.

Therefore, the first “appearance to the people” of the PlayStation 5 turned out to be strange – two hours of pre-release of game titles, many of which gamers caused a grin and a couple of minutes to show the true design of the console. Well, and technical specifications with prices – who needs them when the paradigm has changed?

PlayStation 5 Release Date

Experts predict that the world will see the PlayStation 5 in 2020-2021. For example, in an interview with GamingBolt, analyst Michael Patchter said the PS5 would be compatible with the PS4 Pro. But this does not mean the forthcoming fifth generation: he believes that users will not see the console “until 2019 or 2020.”

Patchter recently confirmed his statement, noting that Sony is likely to release a new console in 2020. He added that during this time the PS4 Pro will become the company’s base model, and its price will be reduced.

A recent report from Jason Schreyer from Kotaku confirms this thesis. The analyst talked with several developers about the possible release dates for the console. Most conversations indicated its release in 2020.
This information in November 2018 was indicated by one of the users of Reddit, which was noted by confirmed plums from the gaming industry. He explains that the console will be pre-announced around mid-2019, full specifications and technical details are revealed later at the PlayStation Experience Event. “Game Station 5” should go on sale in March-November 2020.

Sony’s new CEO Kenichiro Yoshida has published a three-year business development plan that predicts that the company’s profits will fall by 2021. And this is the kind of fall that can happen as the PlayStation 4 reaches market saturation. Then it’s time to launch the PS5.

But according to information from the largest American retailer of game consoles and video games, GameStop, the next-generation prefix will be shown in 2019 due to a decrease in demand for current versions of the PlayStation. Retailer CFO Rob Lloyd calls this situation “pent-up demand,” when gamers prefer to wait for nekstgena.

An intermediate result in the discussion of the timing of the release of new items was summed up by Mark Zerny, Sony game designer. In an interview with Wired, he said that in 2019 the “five” should not be expected. And in October 2019, in an interview with the same Wired, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan noted that the PlayStation 5 will be released at the end of 2020.

It is likely that the new PlayStation will be fully presented on February 12, 2020 during the annual PlayStation Meeting. This date is indicated, for example, by David Juff, creator of God of War, Twisted Metal and Calling All Car. However, commodity consoles are unlikely to reach stores by the end of 2020.

In the end, the answer about the date of the premiere of the PlayStation 5 was given by Sony itself. Despite the coronavirus epic, the Japanese corporation decided to show the new generation of the console on June 11, 2020. The event will be held online. However, the presentation in the middle of the year does not mean at all that the prefix will go on sale in the near future. Moreover, there are rumors that the PlayStation 5 will not be sold until 2021. Although they refute this at the company itself, they make it clear that not everything will go smoothly with sales. So, the vice president of Sony Interactive Entertainment and the heads of PlayStation, Jim Ryan, noted in May 2020 that a shortage and problems with the lack of a sufficient number of consoles in warehouses are expected at the initial stage after the launch of the game station.

UPD June 11, 2020. Sony held the long-awaited presentation of the new console, but never revealed the release date. However, according to indirect data, this will still happen at the end of 2020 – the first games for the PlayStation 5 were announced just for Christmas.

PlayStation 5 Features

In April 2018, the publication SemiAccurate announced that it received some leakage of information about the not yet announced Sony console. According to them, the company will use the new set-top box to promote VR technology. In addition, the PlayStation 5 should get an APU (accelerated processor), consisting of an 8-core Zen processor and a Navi-based GPU (graphics processor), with support for ray tracing, as was done in the latest generation of video cards.

Now it’s hard to say what exactly will be the future AMD single-chip platform. The most promising option was to install the latest 7nm processor. According to rumors, the maximum processor clock speed will be at 3.4 GHz. These processors will be put into production in the third quarter of 2020. A custom graphics processor is rumored to be based on the RDNA 2 architecture and run at 1.7 GHz with a performance of 13.3 teraflops.

The prefix will receive ultra-fast RAM GDDR6. Judging by the specifications of the set-top box that the manufacturer sent to the developers merged into the Network, the set-top box has 16 Samsung memory chips marked K4ZAF325BM-HC18. Such a console has 32 GB of RAM (it is most likely shared with a video accelerator). However, it is not known whether there will be such a volume of RAM for consoles that will go into series. Perhaps the size of the drives will reach 20 GB.

Interestingly, insiders began to report after the presentation of the “gaming Netflix” Google Stadia about the reaction of the Japanese corporation to this news. So, Kotaku editor Jason Schreyer said that Sony is striving to exceed the 10.7 teraflops mark that Google’s cloud-based “set-top box” has.

In general, the graphics in the new generation should change significantly, as hinted at by Pete Hines, vice president of video games publisher Bethesda Softworks. Hines said in an interview with The Telegraph that he is dedicated to some details of the upcoming release.

“The shift from Xbox and PS2 to Xbox 360 and PS3 was very noticeable,” says the publisher. – We switched from old formats to HD, and it was awesome. And then the Xbox One and PS4 happened, but there was no wow effect. I don’t know how much things will change this time. I wonder how great the difference between generations will be.

One of the hottest rumors around the PS5 is that the console will have a separate graphics chip that can provide games at 60 fps in 4K UHD resolution. Note that in most modern games, such an indicator is unattainable on any of the existing 3D-cards. However, the same game architect Mark Zerni said that the new PlayStation will support video games in 8K resolution. And this, by the way, is 7680×4320 pixels, which is four times higher than 4K.

The head of the PlayStation division, Jim Ryan, said that the new set-top box will be able to display 4K images on a TV with a frame frequency of as much as 120 Hz. True, to make this possible, you need a TV or monitor that supports such a refresh rate.

Japanese journalist Sendz Nishikawa, who has earned his credibility by predicting the release of the Nintendo Switch Lite, believes that along with the PlayStation 5 Sony will release the Pro version immediately next year. Perhaps it will support 8K resolution, while the standard version will be limited to 4K.

The appearance of the new generation of consoles for the fall of 2019 remains a secret, but something is still known. In May of this year, a certain device from Sony was patented in Brazil, and on August 13 it appeared in the database of the World Intellectual Property Office. There it is designated as “data processing equipment and peripheral equipment”, namely, game consoles are usually referred to this category. Moreover, Sony CTO Yusuhiro Ootori is mentioned in the device description as the author of the design. It was he who participated in the development of previous versions of the console. The proposed case is rounded with a large number of grilles required for the cooling system. The main radiator is made in the form of a Roman numeral V.

Rumors about the appearance of the “five” began to receive confirmation from the fall of 2019. True, while we are talking about a version for developers, but many sources say that this is exactly what the PlayStation 5 will look like: a V-shaped radiator, a glossy front, a drive slot, and a silver-black color. A photo of the devkits of the console was shown by a user of Twitter Alcoholikaust at the end of November.

However, the appearance of commodity consoles can be very different from devkits for developers. The Letsgodigital resource managed to get drawings, supposedly of the device that will appear on the shelves at the end of 2020. 3D renders show the updated, if not evolutionary, design of Sony set-top boxes. But if you look at the renderings of the console in profile, you can see the Roman numeral “V”. At the back you can see the ventilation holes.

However, the renderings from March 2020 reveal a completely different look for the console. Thematic portal LetsGoDigital. And it looks different, more conservative – strict lines, right angles and LED stripes.

PlayStation 5 should get a revolutionary surround sound system. The “four” got the speakers and the sound processing algorithm from the PS3. In the new generation, the audio system will allow players to even calculate the location of the enemy on the map, which helps a lot, for example, in online shooters.

UPD June 11, 2020. Sony outplayed everyone – not the insiders nor the numerous “leaks” guessed the appearance of the new product. The prefix is made in a design that is completely unlike its predecessors – the complex architecture of the case is combined with the simplicity of the lines. In general, the appearance of the new items can be called truly beautiful.

The main color will be white. At the end of March 2019, the alleged appearance of the gamepad for the PlayStation 5 was leaked to the Network. The controller is noticeably different from DualShock 4. It has a more rounded shape and now uses a touch screen instead of the usual touchpad. But according to other sources, DualShock 5 will resemble its predecessor and will do without a display. But the joystick can get a built-in microphone. It is associated with another feature of the future set-top box – the PlayStation Assistant proprietary voice assistant, which became known in the fall of 2019. The controller will receive “adaptive triggers”, they can offer different levels of resistance, which, for example, will make you feel the difference between a machine gun and a shotgun.

Triggers will also provide excellent tactile feedback. Judging by the leak on the official French site of the PlayStation, the new gamepad will be fully compatible with the fourth-generation console.

With the new game console, the second-generation PS VR helmet will also be shown. Its technical specifications are still unknown, but it is stated that the 2016 VR VR glasses will be compatible with the console.

Despite rumors, there will be room for a drive in the new generation of Game Station. The developers promise that the new console will be able to run games from the PS4. However, users will be offered to buy games via the Internet, and the Wi-Fi 802.11ac module for fast wireless Internet will help. In the new generation, Sony will abandon the slow hard drive in favor of an SSD. SSD will significantly speed up the work of the console and loading games. All the same data on engineering samples, they say that the Toshiba SSD is soldered to the system board. Its volume reaches 1 or 2 TB with a data transfer rate of up to 5.5 GB / s. How much faster will the new console work, the Japanese have clearly demonstrated at a private event for developers, held at the end of May 2019. The console prototype competed in download speed with the PS4 Pro using the Spider-Man game as an example. So, a future novelty about 10 times faster loaded the game and texture. This was clearly visible in locations in which the player needed a high speed of movement.

UPD June 11, 2020. Ultrafast SSD-drives become almost the main feature of the console – with their help, for example, in games worlds are instantly loaded. They still left the drive, but only in the standard PS 5. Sony demonstrated the version without it – PS5 Digital Edition. It is interesting that such an division into the console with the drive and without guessed not a single insider.

The PS5 will use 100 GB optical disks inserted in the optical drive, which also serves as a Blu-ray 4K player. And in November 2019, rumors began to appear about certain cartridges that would connect to the console. Sony has confirmed the “atavism”, which is planned to be used to store various data. Apparently, we are talking about external SSD-drives. The installation of the game will be slightly different from the PS4.

This time, Sony is changing its approach to storage, making it a more customizable installation and uninstall process. It will be possible to install only the multiplayer campaign of the game, leave single-user for another time or just install it in its entirety, and then delete the single-user campaign after it is completed.

In the spirit of modern green trends, the new PlayStation will be more economical to consume electricity. According to the head of the Sony gaming direction, Jim Ryan, in sleep mode, the console will consume only 0.5 watts, which is 17 times less than the PS4 with USB charging turned on (8.8 watts), and 6 times with the charger turned off ( 3 watts).

In mid-December 2019, a year before the expected release date of the new PS5, Sony introduced the first exclusive game for the console. Borderlands developers have prepared an action game with a third-person view and elements of a role-playing game called Godfall. According to the fashion of recent years, the emphasis in the game will be on cooperative passage. Interestingly, the game will be exclusive to the PlayStation 5 for a limited time, the PC version has already been announced for 2021. It is possible that the title will be released on direct competitors of the PS5 – the new Xbox and Google Stadia.

A number of game developers have said that a new level of performance will take graphics to a different level. So, in the past, a strange and unnatural image of hair on the heads of heroes or the body of animals will go away. Volumetric effects will improve – fire, smoke, fog and clouds. They promise to become more realistic and dynamic.

By the way, in mid-March 2020, the main characteristics of the new console from Sony were confirmed by the largest retail network for the sale of GameStop consoles and video games, on the site of which a page dedicated to PS5 appeared. It talks about 8K screen support, real-time ray tracing, an eight-core processor from AMD and an ultra-fast solid state drive.

PlayStation 5 Price

Although the PlayStation 5 prefix will not be released soon, but information about the price for it starts to leak out. So, one of the insiders told Reddit that the console will go on sale in the United States at a price of $ 500. The same information is confirmed by the discharge of information in November 2019, which refers to the sales plans of the device in the United States. Interestingly, the PlayStation 4 in 2013 debuted at a price of $ 400. And the more powerful PlayStation 4 Pro also started at $ 400.

The company Sony is preparing buyers for the fact that the console will cost decent money at the start of sales. The same Jim Ryan said that the price of the console will fully correspond to the capabilities of the console, but there will be no cheap “five”. Comforting the fans, the functionary of the Japanese corporation added that the console would definitely be the money that would be asked for it.

UPD June 11, 2020. You will be very surprised, but at the June presentation at Sony, they did not say a word about the cost of the new set-top box. Looking forward to the numbers in the fall?

The first games for the PlayStation 5

At the presentation on June 11, they talked more about games than about the console itself. The list of confirmed titles for PS 5 looks like this:

Spider-Man: Miles Morales;
Gran Turismo 7;
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart;
Project Athia;
Stray;
Returnal;
Sackboy: A Big Adventure;
Kena: Bridge of Spirits;
Oddworld: Soulstorm;
GhostWire Tokyo;
Godfall;
Solar Ash;
Hitman III;
Astro Bot;
Little Devil Inside;
NBA 2K21;
Bugsnax;
Deathloop;
Resident Evil: Village;
Pragmata;
Horizon: Forbidden West;
Grand Theft Auto 5 Enhanced.

Not all of them will be available immediately after the presentation of the console. Firstly, the PlayStation 5 itself will go on sale no earlier than the end of the 20th year. Secondly, only a part of the projects will be ready by this moment. The remaining games from the list will be shown in 2021-22.