Sony Just Announced the Design and Dozens of Games for Its PlayStation 5 Console

From Best Products

After months of rumors and even some delays, Sony finally unveiled the final design of its next-generation PlayStation 5 console at its Future of Gaming event.

The console is expected to be released this fall — just in time for the holidays — and we couldn’t be more excited. Gamers can now catch a glimpse of the all-new console and its controller. The PS5 sports a bold, two-tone design that shies away from the console’s past aesthetics.

Sony even sprinkled in some teasers of its upcoming lineup of PlayStation 5 games. Although full details on pricing and a specific release date haven’t been finalized yet, we’ve broken down everything we know so far about the PlayStation 5.

Last Updated: June 2020

Not One, But Two PS5 Systems

At its launch, Sony will offer buyers the choice of two consoles. One model is equipped with an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive, while the other omits the disc drive and will require gamers to digitally download or stream games and videos.

Sony says the gameplay experience on the disc-less model will be the same, but the console is physically slimmer. We expect the digital-only version to have higher internal storage, so gamers will be able to install more titles.

Abundant Processing and Graphics Power

Some of the biggest reveals at Sony’s event were the PS5’s technical specifications. As you’d expect, the system will boast more powerful hardware than previous models, putting it in line with high-end gaming PCs.

The console is powered by an eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU, a custom AMD RDNA 2-based GPU, and the chips will provide 10.28 teraflops of power. Sony is using a proprietary 825 GB solid-state drive and has 16 GB of GDDR6 RAM to help speed up load times, too.

If all of this tech jargon confuses you, just know that the PlayStation 5 is more than 5.5 times as powerful as the original PlayStation 4 and about 2.5 times more powerful than the PlayStation 4 Pro.

Plus, its high-bandwidth SSD is so speedy that it’ll load 5.5 GB of data in a single second. This means that there likely won’t be any load screens and you’ll immediately be back in the action after your character dies or while fast traveling throughout game maps.

Since audio plays a crucial role to content immersion, the PS5 will feature a custom audio engine, which Sony dubs Tempest 3D AudioTech. The PlayStation 5 supports 3D audio, so the sounds you’ll hear while gaming offer a greater sense of presence and locality. For instance, you’ll be able to hear raindrops hitting different surfaces all around you and can precisely pinpoint where an enemy is in relation to your character.

Epic Games used the PlayStation 5 in a technical demonstration to highlight its upcoming Unreal Engine 5 software. In the impressive clip below, you can get an early look at what the new console is capable of.

A Diverse Selection of 4K HDR Games

Sony has announced a slew of launch titles for its upcoming console. The lineup includes genres for every type of gamer. There’s a new Spider-Man game swinging our way, a new Grand Turismo title with absolutely stunning graphics, a sequel to the fan-favorite Horizon Zero Dawn, and a Resident Evil title that’ll surely give you nightmares.

Here’s everything that’s been announced so far:

• Astro's Playroom
• Demon's Souls
• Destruction All Stars
• Gran Turismo 7
• Horizon Forbidden West
• Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Returnal
• Sackboy
• Bugsnax
• DEATHLOOP
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Godfall
• Goodbye Volcano High
• Grand Theft Auto V and Grand Theft Auto Online
• HITMAN 3
• JETT: The Far Shore
• Kena: Bridge of the Spirits
• Little Devil Inside
• NBA 2K21
• Oddworld Soulstorm
• Pragmata
• Project Athia
• Resident Evil Village
• Solar Ash
• Stray
• Tribes of Midgard
• The Pathless

All of our fingers are crossed in hopes we'll see a new God of War, Grand Theft Auto 6, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War in the coming months, too!

An All-New Refined Controller

The PlayStation 5 DualSense controller rocks a black-and-white color scheme. It’s wireless, and it features adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, and a new create button for sharing content. It also has a center-mounted touchpad, built-in microphones, and a USB-C port for recharging. We’re most excited about its support for haptic feedback.

In case you’re unfamiliar, haptic feedback will further immerse you into games by utilizing your sense of touch. For example, you’ll feel the slow grittiness of driving a car through mud or a more extreme vibration when shooting a gun turret in games. As far as those adaptive triggers, these could add resistance in certain scenarios, such as when shooting a bow in your game.

Unsurprisingly, Sony has created a number of accessories for the PS5, including a DualSense charging station that recharges two controllers, a new HD camera, a PULSE 3D wireless headset, and a media remote. There’s still no word on if the accessories will all launch alongside the new PS5 consoles or at a later date. Pricing for the accessories hasn’t been announced either.

The Console Is Backwards Compatible

Hideaki Nishino, PlayStation’s senior vice president of platform planning and management, said that Sony has devoted significant efforts to allow their fans to play their old favorite PS4 titles.

“We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5,” he said. “We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions.”

Sony is currently evaluating games on a title-by-title basis to spot any issues that need adjustment from the games’ original software developers. The good news is that Sony has already tested hundreds of titles — and there are plans to test thousands more as the PlayStation 5’s launch date inches closer.

Release Date and Price

As previously mentioned, Sony has not announced pricing or a launch date for the PlayStation 5 yet. There’s a chance the global pandemic could cause delays, but Sony says it is on track to launch the console during the 2020 holiday season. We hope that history will repeat itself and we’ll see a launch date sometime this fall. For context, the PS4 launched in North America on Nov. 15, 2013, and the PS3 hit store shelves on Nov. 17, 2006.

According to a Bloomberg report, the console is expected to be priced in the $500–550 range. Since Sony is selling two variants of the PlayStation 5 console, we expect the removal of the disc drive would mean that the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition is slightly cheaper.

What Else We Know — And Don’t Know

• The PS5 will support third-party external drives

• The console will support 8K gaming

• The PS5 produces a new type of visuals, called “Ray Tracing,” which you can learn more about here

• The PS5 works with the existing PlayStation VR headset

• Sony hasn’t said if the PlayStation 5 will support the PlayStation Move controllers and the PlayStation Camera

• The PS5 home screen will show gamers mission details without requiring you to fully open up the game

• You’ll be able to install individual game modes (rather than being forced to install entire games)

• The front panel features one USB-C port and one USB-A port

• Sony hasn’t revealed the PS5’s rear port array

• Sony hasn’t given the exact dimensions of the console but it’s expected to be 15 inches long when rested horizontally, making it 3 inches longer than the Xbox Series X.

• Sony hasn’t announced if PlayStation Plus will be required for online gameplay

• Sony hasn’t announced if PlayStation 5 games will be supported on its PlayStation Now service

Last Updated: April 2019

Sony Confirms "Next-Gen Console"

Mark Cerny, who served as Sony's lead system architect for the PlayStation 4, delivered the first details about Sony's next video game console in an interview with Wired.

Although he didn't share the system's name — he only referred to it as the "next-gen console" — he did, however, confirm that it has entirely new hardware that will support 8K graphics, 3D audio, and that it'll be backwards-compatible with existing PlayStation 4 games.

It has entirely new hardware that will support 8K graphics, 3D audio, and it'll be backwards-compatible with existing PlayStation 4 games.

Unfortunately, according to Cerny, the PS4's successor won't be landing in stores anytime in 2019. The good news is that a number of game studios have been actively working with devkits, so we have high hopes that a 2020 launch is possible.

Cerny said that the upcoming console will have an eight-core CPU based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line. On top of that, it’ll contain eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture.

As for its GPU, you can expect a custom GPU derived from AMD’s Radeon Navi hardware. The graphics chip will bring ray-tracing graphics to a video game console for the first time.

What does all that mumbo-jumbo mean for you? Next-generation games will have cinema-quality special effects, with even more lifelike graphics and soundscapes to offer you a much more immersive experience.

Next-generation games will have cinema-quality special effects, with even more lifelike graphics and soundscapes to offer you a much more immersive experience.

Speaking of immersion, Cerny didn’t go into details of Sony’s VR strategy, beyond saying that VR is “very important” to Sony and that the current PSVR headset will be compatible with its next console.

One of the biggest changes coming to the PlayStation 5 is that Sony will replace its hard drive with an SSD (finally!) This will greatly improve load times and speed up gameplay — especially when fast traveling to new, and previously explored worlds in your games.

Just because the PS5 will have a larger and faster SSD doesn’t mean games will all be digital downloads. Cerny said the console will still accept physical media, meaning it won’t be a download-only console like Microsoft’s new disc-less Xbox One S.

With all these exciting new details, you’re probably wondering, “How much is this going to cost, me?” Big surprise, Sony hasn’t made a peep about pricing just yet! But Peter Rubin, the senior reporter who published Wired’s interview with Cerny, tweeted some notes about pricing that didn’t make his story. You can check out his tweetstorm below. And as soon as we get more details about the PlayStation 5, we’ll report back and update this piece!

Last Updated: March 2019

Sony May Have Already Teased the PS5

Sony has mostly been tight-lipped in regard to the PlayStation 5. But CEO Kenichiro Yoshida did tell the Financial Times in an interview last October that “It’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware.”

In the same piece, sources close to Sony were cited as saying that the next console “might not represent a major departure from the PS4, and that the fundamental architecture would be similar,” meaning there may not be a major redesign for the new console.

There are rumors, though, that the new console is going by the internal code name "Erebus,” who in Greek mythology is the god of darkness and one of the first five beings in existence. While that’s not exactly hard proof, Sony does seem to have a certain affinity for Greek mythology: The PlayStation 4 was codenamed Orbis and the PlayStation VR was codenamed Morpheus. One of Sony’s most well-known franchises, God of War, even has a Greek God as its protagonist.

There's no word on if it'll actually be called the PlayStation 5, but some say Sony has teased the name on a PlayStation 4 holiday theme it sent out to gamers who claim the letter "S" in the word Playstation looks a lot like the number "5.”

No Official Word on a Release Date Yet

Sony still hasn’t confirmed a concrete release date for its next game console. PlayStation head John Kodera did tell the Wall Street Journal in May 2018, however, that Sony will “use the next three years to prepare the next step,” which puts the PlayStation 5 on track for a launch somewhere around 2021.

Additionally, tech reporters have quoted Kodera as saying that the PS4 is reaching the final phase of its life cycle.

As they say, history does oftentimes repeat itself. The PS4 came out in late 2013, 7 years after the PS3 was released. The PS3 launched almost 7 years after the PS2 did, too. So, there’s a chance we could see the PlayStation 5 as soon as the 2020 holiday season.

Sony has been busy recently, though, having launched the PlayStation 4 Pro — a 4K-supported PS4 — and a smaller PlayStation 4 Slim in November 2016 to replace the original PS4. So, there’s a chance that could buy Sony more time to delay the launch until 2021 after its fiscal year ends in the spring. A longer launch window isn’t unheard of, either, since the Xbox One came 8 years after the Xbox 360.

Jason Schreier, an author and news editor at Kotaku and who is well-connected with game developers, said his sources claim the PlayStation 5 is still “a ways off” and it may not arrive until 2020.

PS5 Still Expected to Use Game Discs

Although it’s probably been a while since you last purchased a DVD or Blu-ray disc — thanks to streaming apps like Netflix — we think that the PlayStation 5 will still have physical games.

Kodera’s predecessor, Andrew House, said in April 2018 that he expects publishers to continue shipping physical disc-based games for the foreseeable future, despite the newfound presence of cloud-streaming games, such as those on the PlayStation Now platform.

You can almost certainly expect that subscriptions and online services will play a key role in the next PlayStation console. Especially given that Microsoft is making moves of its own in cloud gaming, with its newly announced Project xCloud game streaming platform.

New PS5-Exclusive Games Are Coming

Whatever games we see on Sony’s next-gen console, they're likely to break new ground in terms of realism, detail, and graphics capabilities thanks to advances in game design and the PlayStation 5’s assumed extra processing power.

There isn’t a confirmed list of launch titles for the PlayStation 5 just yet, although Newsweek recently posted a list of games you can expect to see. All we know for certain is Sony will probably launch new multiplayer titles for its new console.

Shawn Layden, chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, told Business Insider he expects that local multiplayer and couch co-ops are areas where you will likely see Sony "start to make more noise in the new term."

“[Previously,] we've been going really heavy into story-driven gaming. The power of the narrative. Big, spectacular experiences. But not a whole lot in the multiplayer side of things,” he said.

There’s still no word on if game developers have devkits in hand for making games for Sony’s next console. The Witcher 3’s developer, CD Projekt Red, has been working on a new game called Cyberpunk 2077. Last year, studio representatives gave a presentation about the game and one of its slides had the phrase “Rich, true-to-life visuals built on current and next generation technology.” Presumably, the game will be available on the new PlayStation 5 console.

Polyphony Digital CEO and producer of the Grand Turismo series, Kazunori Yamauchi, also made a comment during a studio tour that made it seem like work has already begun on next-gen games. He said that his team is "building for future versions of the console rather than the one we see today.”

It also appears as though most of Sony’s internal development teams have changed gears and the PlayStation 4 is no longer their main priority, especially given that they won’t even be present at the E3 conference this year.

That’s not to say there aren’t exciting new games in the works for the PS4 and PS4 Pro. Plenty of exclusive titles are in the pipeline, including Days Gone, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, and The Last of Us Part II. There’s just an increased likelihood that some of these major games will be cross-platform titles that work on both the new and newly outdated consoles.

Backing up this claim is industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, who said that the second half of 2019 is still “in flux” for Sony and that only a few unannounced games would be coming to the PS4, and that most of the focus is on the PlayStation 5.

Even further substantiating it was a recent report by the GDC's State of the Game Industry, which found that 18% of game developers are already working on games that will play on the next generation of consoles.

Backwards Compatibility Is Likely

Sony has filed some patents which suggest that the upcoming console will be backward compatible with not just PS4 games, but PS1, PS2, and PS3 titles as well. This is no surprise, since Microsoft flaunts backward compatibility as a major feature of its Xbox platform. We think it makes total sense for Sony to step up its game and allow gamers to play their existing collection of games.

There has also been a few patents that suggest the DualShock 5 wireless controller will have a touchscreen. Many expect the PlayStation 5 to have improved VR support, better processors, and more storage space, but those are all the rumors we’ve heard at this time.

We expect to hear more murmurs about the PlayStation 5 on March 18 when the video game industry will gather in San Francisco for the Game Developers Conference.

We will continue to update this post with new information as soon as we hear it!

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