PlayStation 5
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And finally…here’s Sony’s PlayStation 5
Today’s PlayStation 5 event was all about the games — generally a good sign when your system is due out by the end of the year. But after more than an hour of real PS5 gameplay capture, Sony had one more important thing up its sleeve: the console. Announced back at CES in January, we’ve seen very little of the hardware thus far, beyond last month’s DualSense Controller review.
Sony finally reviewed the PS5 tower in all its glory — and I’ve got to admit, the damn thing looks pretty slick. That goes double when placed up against the Xbox Series X, which frankly looked a bit more like a router than I think most were expecting. The PS5 isn’t entirely un-router-like, but at least it’s a sleek-looking one. While it seems likely we’ll see multiple color options, the unit that featured prominently in the event featured the same sort of white with black trim color scheme we saw on the controller review.
Here, however, there are some sharp finds and radical angles that could make it difficult to place the system in a horizontal configuration, if you’re so inclined. The back, meanwhile, features an exposed black surface with a fairly large cooling vent. As seen above, there are two distinct versions of the system. At left is the standard PS5 and at right is the Digital Edition, which ditches the familiar disc drive. Seems Sony’s not ready to abandon physical games just yet. Like Microsoft’s digital version of the last Xbox, the system will most likely come with a price cut over the standard model. It also appears a fair bit thinner.
Specwise, we know we’re in for an AMD Zen 2 CPU and AMD’s RDNA 2-based GPU, coupled with 16GB of RAM and an 825GB SSD — no word on whether that last bit will vary between models. There’s also a separate HD camera accessory and matching Pulse 3D headphones, which feature that 3D audio Sony has long been pushing. Plenty more details to come — including price — ahead of the system’s launch this holiday season.
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Spider-Man and stray cats take center stage as Sony showcases its PS5 gaming lineup
Several months after teasing a holiday release for the PlayStation 5 back at CES, Sony finally gave gamers a lengthy sneak peek at the next-gen console’s lineup. The event — which was initially set for last week before being pushed due to nationwide protests — comes a month after a similar event for Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
The event was very much inline with a standard E3 presentation — albeit devoid of the standard live element, due to COVID-19-related restrictions. And honestly, it was a nice change after last year’s odd, low-key Sony event at the gaming show, focused almost exclusively on gameplay. In fact, as the company noted, everything after the Grand Theft Auto V re-release trailer that opened the show was captured directly from a PS5. That, too, is a welcome change from the standard barrage of misleading trailers.
GTA V kicked off the show — a nod to the the 25th anniversary of the PlayStation and the fact that every version of the console has had an installment of the popular Rockstar series. An upgrade version of V will feature expanded gameplay when it launches in 2021. More excitingly is Spider-Man: Miles Morales, a sequel to the PS4 Marvel gaming title featuring the Into the Spider-Verse star. The title is set for a release alongside the new console in late 2020.
Popular racing title Gran Turismo followed, with extended gameplay. The seventh version of the series is set for release on PS5, as is a new installment of the Ratchet and Clank adventure series, titled Rift Apart.
Among the more compelling new additions is Stray. Due out in 2021, the trailer didn’t reveal much, but the game appears to star a gifted stray cat set in a world where humans are mercifully no longer around. Honestly, I’m into it.
After another look at the PS5 DualSense controller we first saw in April, previews started getting faster and furiouser. The list includes LittleBigPlanet spin-off, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, Oddworld: Soulstorm, Returnal, Destruction Allstars and Ghostwire Tokyo. In January 2021, Agent 47 will return to PlayStation yet again, with the release of Hitman III.
Also arriving next year is Solar Ash, another title from AnnaPurna (also the studio behind stray), which was among the more aesthetically stunning entries of the day, with bold, flat colors. The Kickstarter-supported Little Devil Inside is another stunning addition with a distinct art style — among the cartooniest of the games we saw today.
And, of course, it wouldn’t be a proper PlayStation launch without at least one flagship gaming title. NBA 2K21 was the first to take center stage. The trailer featured the kind of closeup, realistic sweat one can only get with a next-gen console. Among the highest-profile remakes for the PS5, meanwhile, is an update of 2009,’s PlayStation 3 RPG Demon’s Souls, from Bluepoint and Japan Studio.
A presentation that was largely devoid of first-person shooters (honestly, probably for the best given everything that’s been going on in the world) did feature Arkane Studio’s time-bending Deathloop, however. There was another cat — this time holographic — in the trailer for Pragmata. The image of an astronaut walking through an abandoned Times Square was honestly a little too real right now. You’ll have to wait until 2022 for that one. The Horizon Zero Dawn sequel Forbidden West continued the close to hope apocalyptic vibes. Maybe things will feel less end-timesy when it arrives? Hard to say, but at least the graphics look great.
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Sony will show off the first PlayStation 5 games on June 4th
Sony has been dishing out details on the PlayStation 5 piece-by-piece, rather than dropping all of the details at one big mega event. First came word of the Holiday 2020 release window. Then came an overview of the specs — like that it’ll have a super-fast solid-state drive by default. Most recently, they showed off the controller. (The divvied up approach makes sense, really; with the ongoing pandemic preventing events like E3 and GDC from happening… why wouldn’t Sony work on their own schedule and make every aspect its own mini-spectacle?)
The next glimpse they give, it seems, will be of the first games coming to the console.
This morning Sony announced that they’ll be hosting a live-streamed event on June 4th at 1pm Pacific. In a blog post about the event, Sony Interactive CEO Jim Ryan clarifies the focus:
We’ve shared technical specifications and shown you the new DualSense wireless controller. But what is a launch without games?
That’s why I’m excited to share that we will soon give you a first look at the games you’ll be playing after PlayStation 5 launches this holiday.
Ryan also notes that the event should last roughly an hour, but doesn’t suggest how many different games that’ll cover.
In a video that managed to pull in millions of views, Epic Games recently gave a first look at its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 running on pre-release PS5 hardware. Given that video’s success, I’d imagine that Sony is pretty dang eager to keep the early looks coming.
Will we finally see the console hardware itself? That’s still unclear. Seeing as they’ve pieced just about everything else out, though, I’d bet they’re saving that one for an event a bit closer to launch.
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EA games on PS4 and Xbox One could be ‘upgraded free’ to next-gen console versions
2020 and 2021 will be one of the periodic transitional eras in gaming as Sony and Microsoft debut their shiny new consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. To ease the process (and spur adoption of the next generation), EA may make its upcoming titles free to “upgrade” to your chosen console.
On an earnings call last night, EA COO Blake Jorgensen at the end of his remarks noted a possible effect on revenue “from the games we are launching for the current generation of consoles that can also be upgraded free for the next generation.”
EA declined to comment on the comment, but the meaning seems obvious enough. It likely refers to “cross-gen” games that will appear on both existing consoles and those set to debut later in the year. If you buy the next, say, “Battlefield” game on PlayStation 4, you will have the option to transfer it somehow to the PlayStation 5.
Exactly how this would work is not clear — there will almost certainly be some rigmarole involving deactivating the license on your old copy — but the effect is a positive and consumer-friendly one. People can buy a game, from EA anyway, safe in the knowledge that they can continue to play it even if they buy a new console. That hasn’t been the case, in general, before.
In fact, the whole transition is looking to be a relatively easy one: The new consoles will be backward-compatible with many games from the previous generation; services like online access and monthly free games will cross over; some hardware and accessories will be shared; built-in streaming options mean improved portability.
EA’s apparent commitment to cross-gen upgrades is among the first, though some publishers and developers have floated the idea or declared support for it, pending approval from the console makers themselves. The confirmation could trigger an avalanche of announcements as others hurry to assure gamers that they, too, will provide this option.
Sony and Microsoft are the ones left holding the bag here: While a sale is a sale for EA or Ubisoft, the console makers are under tremendous pressure to show their console launches are successful. (Nintendo, as usual, is pursuing its own agenda independent from the cadence of its rivals.)
Part of that strategy is high-profile next-gen exclusives that people save up to buy alongside the new consoles, providing revenue spikes and platform lock-ins. When a large amount of those sales occur earlier in the year, and technically for the previous consoles, it’s not a good look.
These policies have a way of evolving right up to and beyond the moment of release. Sony clowned so devastatingly on Microsoft’s confusing and limited game transfer policies at E3 2013, the outset of this console generation, that it affected the whole zeitgeist, boosting PS4 sales and forcing Microsoft to reconsider. (You can see me in the video of it; I’ve rarely heard a crowd so excited about something.)
It’s better to err on the side of liberality, it turns out. EA, which has routinely erred in the other direction over the last few years, hopes perhaps to curry favor in advance of a gaming market opening up in new directions. We’ll see if other companies follow suit.
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Sony finally unveils PlayStation 5 details
The PlayStation 5 warranted little more than a mention when it was introduced at CES back in January. Sony was planning a much bigger reveal in a few weeks at GDC in SF, but, well, COVID-19 happened. So here we are with a live-streamed version of the event, offering far and away the deepest dive into the next-gen console.
Lead system architect Mark Cerny kicked off a low key presentation to a small gathering of people — a direct response to on-going social distancing concerns. The event did, indeed go deep, at Cerny discussed how Sony enabled the 5GB/s SSD — the most requested new feature from developers. The system is said to potentially be nearly 100x faster than the PS4’s I/O.
The company also dumped a number of technical details for the forthcoming system, beginning to bring the PS5 up to speed with the Xbox Series X. Along with the new ultra-high-speed SDD, the system will sport a custom AMD GPU with ray tracing, and, as is Sony’s wont, 3D audio, for an improved multimedia home entertainment offering. As with the Xbox, there will be backwards compatibility — specifically with the PS4.
The CPU is an AMD’s Zen 2, with eight cores at 3.5GHz, while the GPU is based on AMD’s RDNA 2 architecture. The later offers 10.28 teraflops of compute power, by way of 36 CUs. There’s 16GB of memory on board, coupled with 825GB of solid state storage. Also on board is the new boost feature, designed to better regulate power consumption and heat on the system.
Per Cerny, rather than focusing on the temperature itself, the system monitors “the activities that the GPU and CPU are performing and set the frequencies on that basis .” The specifics of system cooling is one of several features the company is promising to reveal in further detail in a future “teardown” of the system.
3D audio was covered in the “Finding New Dreams” segment. Cerny pointed out that audio is often a bit of an afterthought on systems that are focused on graphics first. He added that it certainly applied to the PS4. The 5, meanwhile, is focused on bringing a version of PSVR’s immersive audio to the new system, adding things like presence and locality to the console. The company promises to offer much improved virtual surround sound, even on less advanced home stereo systems and headphones.
As with the new Xbox, the system is due out at the end of the year. Clearly Sony is just scratching the surface here. There’s still plenty of stuff left to announce between now and the holidays. Game play, anyone?
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Watch Sony unveil the PlayStation 5 live right here
A couple of days after Microsoft unveiled a ton of info about the Xbox Series X, Sony is about to do the exact same thing in a live video. Sony is hosting a live broadcast about the PlayStation 5 today at 9 AM PT, 12 PM ET, 4 PM GMT.
Lead system architect Mark Cerny will unveil the console’s architecture and what it means for both developers and gamers. We already know that the PlayStation 5 will be launched in late 2020. It’ll feature an eight-core AMD CPU, a custom AMD GPU with ray-tracing support and SSD storage.
The controller will support haptic feedback and adaptive triggers depending on what you’re doing in the game. But many details are still missing. Today’s announcement should answer some questions.
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Nintendo and Sony temper console expectations ahead of E3
E3’s just over a month away, and per usual, the news in the lead up has offered more insight into what we won’t be hearing about at the big gaming show. Late last year, Sony announced that it would be skipping its big annual press conference at the event. The move marks a key absence for the gaming giant for the first time in nearly a quarter of a century, as the company will instead be “exploring new and familiar ways to engage our community in 2019.”
The sentiment should ring familiar for those who follow the gaming industry. Several years ago Nintendo made a similar move, eschewing the in-person press conference for the online Nintendo Direct “Treehouse” it uses to showcase new trailers. It’s a method Nintendo has held to ever since.
Game publisher Square Enix this week happily slid into Sony’s prime-time slot, leaving Microsoft the last of the remaining three major console makers with a press conference at the Los Angeles event. The death of shows like E3 has been overstated throughout the years, of course. These things tend to move in cycles, with much of the hype tied specifically to new system reveals.
Microsoft took the wraps off its disc-free Xbox One S “All-Digital Edition” this month, leaving many wondering what the company could still have up its sleeve for the June event. Earlier this week, meanwhile, Sony batted away suggestions that the PlayStation 5 was coming soon. Details are, not surprisingly, still vague, but the company says the next-gen console won’t be arriving in the next six months.
On its earnings call, Nintendo similarly dismissed recent rumors that it would launch a low-cost version of the Switch. The console has been a wild success for the company on the heels of the disappointing Wii U, but slowing sales have pointed to Nintendo’s longstanding tradition of offering modified hardware. Rumors have largely pointed to a lower-cost version of the system that can only be played in portable mode.
None of this is to say we got some kind of preview. Companies love to tease these sorts of things out, but it does appear that the big three are tempering expectations for the show. That leaves some opening for other players — of course, E3 has long been dominated by the big three. Among the other rumors currently circulating ahead of the show is a 2-in-1 gaming tablet from Nvidia.
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