With the PlayStation 5 release taking place alongside the Xbox Series X, players are scouring the internet for concrete information about both consoles in order to make an informed decision.
Despite the long wait for the holidays, Sony has drip fed us information on the specs of the new console in an interview WIRED did with Lead Architect, Mark Cerny.
Early into 2020, Sony has revealed the new logo for the Playstation 5 at this years CES annual trade show in Las Vegas.
WATCH NOW: OUR LIST OF EXCLUSIVE GAMES WE'D LIKE TO SEE FOR THE PS5
What Resolution and Frame Rate will the PS5 support?
The PlayStation 5 will be able to support up to 8K resolution as it looks to the future TV market.
Sony doesn’t only create consoles but they’re also a leading manufacturer of televisions. The PS5's 8K-focused graphical technology gives us a hint to where they see the television market in five or more years as they expect consumers to upgrade from 4K (that’s currently being pushed to market) to an 8K screen.
In addition to the resolution, we know the console will be able to support 120 frames per second (FPS) though it would be wise to assume most games will still be 60FPS.
What Optical Drive will it have?
The PS5 will come with a 4K Blu-ray player (unlike the PS4 that can’t play 4K). This will be able to play 4k Blu-ray movies and TV shows as well as physical PS5 games that will ship on 100GB Blu-ray discs.
Details about the GPU and CPU?
The PlayStation 5 will feature an AMD Ryzen CPU with eight cores, based on the maker's new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture.
Mark Cerny confirmed it will have a next-gen Radeon GPU capable of ray tracing. For those unsure of what ray tracing is, it’s a rendering technique that models how light interacts with the environment thus producing a high degree of visual realism.
The confirmed logo for the PS5
What Storage will the new console have?
The biggest news is the console will shift from using HDDs to SSDs.
Players have the ability to hook up SSDs to the Playstation 4 but having an internal SSD will make a huge difference.
For those unsure why, the difference between a HDD and an SSD is that of speed. An SSD is considerably faster as data is stored on flash-memory chips as opposed to HDDs which use moving parts to read and write information.
Will it support Playstation VR and what about PSVR2?
Playstation VR has been one of the most popular VR headsets on the market with over 4.2 million units sold since its release in October 2016.
It being one of the “cheaper” headsets on the market (not including the price of the console of course) has played a big part in its success.
Sony’s VR strategy is being kept under wraps at this current time but two things have been confirmed.
The current Playstation VR headset will be supported by the PS5 though no one has confirmed as to whether the Playstation Move controllers will be. Same goes for PS4 VR games.
Sony’s Head of R&D Dominic Mallinson confirmed they were working on the second iteration of the PSVR in a presentation last year, however, a week later he did another interview where he said it wouldn’t launch with the PS5.
PS5 vs PS4 Pro
Category | PS4 Pro | PS5 |
|---|---|---|
CPU | AMD Jaguar 8-core (x86-64) | Based on AMD Ryzen 8-core |
GPU | AMD Radeon (4.2 TFLOPs) | Custom Radeon Navi (Unknown TFLOP) |
Dimensions | 11.61in x 12.87in x 2.17in | TBC |
Memory | 8GB GDDR5 + 1GB | TBC |
Storage | 1TB / 2TB | TBC |
Storage Type | HDD | SSD |
Optical Out | Yes | TBC |
AV Out | HDMI 2.0 | TBC |
WiFi | 802.11b/g/n (2.4GHz + 5GHz) | TBC |
Resolution Support | 4K | 8K |
Compared to the Xbox Series X
A quick comparison of the Xbox Series X shows more parallels than divergences, as our own breakdown of Microsoft's console demonstrates. Both intend to support 8K resolution at 120FPS; both support ray-tracing technology. Both even use chipsets of the same generation.
But that doesn't mean that you can just choose a console at random and be done with it, of course. The few points that they differ, whether it be in the form of specific hardware choices or exclusive games access or how they handle digital accounts, are all the more important for their similarities.
Unfortunately, as the chart above demonstrates, there is yet too little known about the specific details of either console to definitively make that comparison. But as we progress through the year, and approach Holidays 2020, those differences will be magnified and talked up. Rest assured on that front.
Read More: Xbox Series X: Release Date, Specs, Design, Games, Price and More
Price
The Playstation 5 is looking to be a very impressive piece of hardware but that’s not much in the grand scheme of things if it’s too expensive to buy for consumers.
One of the original reasons the PS3 failed when compared to the PS2 was it’s hefty price tag that allowed the cheaper Xbox 360 to rise and dominate that generation of consoles.
So far no information on price has been released but if I had to guess, my gut reaction would be that it will come out at the same price as the PS4 as the company shifts from focussing on profits from console sales to getting as many people subscribing to their online service.
The beast that is Sony’s marketing machine is awakening from its slumber and will no doubt give us all the information we need throughout the year. Here’s hoping it matches people's expectations.
PAGE 2: EVERYTHING WE KNOW ABOUT THE PS5 INCLUDING GAMES, RELEASE DATE AND DESIGN
Written byOllie East@EastOllie