Everything we know about the PlayStation 5
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and President Jim Ryan finally confirmed the name of the next PlayStation console and when we will get our hands on it. In a blog post, he says the PlayStation 5 will release during the holiday season in 2020. This is the same time period Microsoft gave for the release of the next Xbox, Project Scarlett.
Alongside news of the release and name of the console, the Dualshock 5 controller was discussed as well. According to an exclusive piece from Wired, Mark Cerny says the new controller will have new adaptive triggers. With these triggers (the L2 and R2 buttons), you will feel tension in the controller when you prepare to fire an arrow. Shooting an assault rifle will feel different than when you have a shotgun. You will feel the resistance of water while swimming. It helps make you feel more immersed with your environment.
The Dualshock 5 is ditching the rumble feature console-players have known for awhile now. In its place is haptic feedback. It’s a big step up from the rumble we have had for about two decades. Haptic feedback will give a different sensation depending on the contact being made. For example, crashing a car into a wall will feel different from being tackled on the football field. Where in the past we have only known a rumble, haptic feedback will distinguish your surroundings.
The Dualshock 5 will be a little heavier than the Dualshock 4 and has a better battery life and will use a USB-C connector. The PS5 dev-kit has been out for awhile now for developers, but the prototype of the Dualshock 5 was recently handed out so we will see how developers make use of the new features.
The PS5 uses a CPU based on AMD’s Ryzen line and a GPU based on its Navi family. There is no longer a spinning a hard drive in the console. It is replaced with a solid state drive that enables the console to load games much faster than the PS4 line of consoles ever could. With the use of the solid state drive, developers can also shrink the size of games and patches, which has been a common complaint in the current generation of consoles.
The console is confirmed to have an optical drive that uses the same 100-GB optical disks as the PS4. What the PS4 does not have in its disc drive is a 4K blu-ray player. That issue is amended with the PS5. Backwards compatibility with the PS4 is already confirmed and the new console will support PSVR as well. The new console also has support for 8K televisions.
The PlayStation 5 has already been confirmed to support ray-tracing, a technique that makes lights look more believable. Cerny says, “There is ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware which I believe is the statement that people were looking for.”
The UI in the PS5 is also receiving an update. Cerny discussed how players would have to boot up a game to see if they could join a friend. Now, all of that will be able to be taken care of from the home screen.
Storage will also be handled differently on the PS5. On current consoles, your entire game is either installed or not. With the PS5, you can choose what parts of the game you want installed. For example, for the new Call of Duty, you could choose to install just the single player campaign to save space. Should you choose to, you could install the multiplayer as well and uninstall only the single player. If you do not plan on using a certain part of the game, you can save the space on it.
Potential PS5 design from a patent
That is everything we know for sure so far on the PlayStation 5. There have been unconfirmed leaks and rumors spreading as well. A potential image of the PS5 could show it has a “V” shape, but could honestly be what the dev-kit looks like and could undergo serious changes in the next year, if it is even real. There is also a rumor about the potential for backwards compatibility for all PlayStation games, but only PS4 games have been confirmed.
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