Sony has again provided some new details on its next-generation console. Sony’s PS5 next-generation console will offer improved cloud gaming performance and “dramatically improved graphics rendering” power.
Sony has said itself, as it showed off a sneak peak at what we’re expecting to be called the PlayStation 5 during a corporate strategy presentation.
In a statement sent out following the presentation, Sony said that the “two keywords for the future direction of PlayStation are ‘immersive’ and ‘seamless,'” with the “‘Immersive’ experience created by dramatically increased graphics rendering speeds, achieved through the employment of further improved computational power and a customized ultra-fast, broadband SSD.”
Additionally, Sony management talked about how streaming will play a big role in the PlayStation brand going forward. The PS5 will support Remote Play functionality, Sony confirmed, while management also said it’s looking to its new deal with Microsoft for cloud-gaming solutions to play a role in the company’s future success in that area. Sony of course already operates the PlayStation Now streaming service (which has 700,000 subscribers by Sony’s latest count), but it appears the company has bigger and bolder plans in the future.
Sony also showed off a demo of the custom SSD storage system that will be employed in its next-generation machine, again hammering home how it expects super-fast load times to improve the player experience:
It appears to be the same demo that PlayStation hardware architect Mark Cerny revealed back in April, suggesting then that the SSD in use is 19 times faster than a standard issue one.
The meeting comes off the back of two key pieces of the puzzle for the PS5 being revealed – firstly, that the next-gen machine will make use of a third-generation, 8-core AMD Ryzen CPU built with 7-nanometer Zen 2 microarchitecture, alongside a customised Radeon Navi GPU capable of ray-tracing, and a surprising partnership with Microsoft to bolster the PlayStation Now cloud infrastructure.
Sony’s drip feed of information continues to solidify what we can expect from the PlayStation 5 then, though three vital pieces of information remain unknown its precise name, its launch window and its pricing. Price-to-performance is always a key factor in a console’s success, and so far it’s difficult to say how Sony will manage to keep the cost attractive and the product financially viable, given the guts it’s purporting to have.
Sony is not attending E3 2019 next month, so the company presumably won’t be announcing the PlayStation 5 there. The PlayStation 5 will have an “appealing” price point given its specs, according to Cerny, but there is no estimate yet regarding what the price may be. As for the release date of the PlayStation 5, Sony has said it will not release in the next fiscal year, which means it won’t launch April 2020 at the soonest.
