First Details on PS5 Revealed, Specs, Backwards Compatible, More - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 July 2019 / 6,020 Views
Wired visited Sony Interactive Entertainment headquarters and speak with lead architect Mark Cerny. The first details for the next generation PlayStation have been revealed. While it is likely the it will be called the PlayStation 5, Cerny only called it the "next-gen console."
The next generation PlayStation will not release in 2019, however, a number of studios are developing games for the console. Sony recently increased the number of devkits it has released to developers.
"The key question is whether the console adds another layer to the sorts of experiences you already have access to, or if it allows for fundamental changes in what a game can be," said Cerny.
The console will be using an AMD Ryzen CPU and contains eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU is a variant on Radeon's Navi devices. It will support ray tracing.
"If you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players’ footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that," said Cerny. "It's all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment."
"As a gamer," he added, "it's been a little bit of a frustration that audio did not change too much between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4. With the next console the dream is to show how dramatically different the audio experience can be when we apply significant amounts of hardware horsepower to it."
Cerny was asked about a next generation virtual reality headset, however, he would not go into details. "I won't go into the details of our VR strategy today," he said. "Beyond saying that VR is very important to us and that the current PSVR headset is compatible with the new console."
The console will be using a solid-state drive in order to decrease the load times in games and support 8K graphics.
"We're very used to flying logos at the start of the game and graphic-heavy selection screens," he said. "Even things like multiplayer lobbies and intentionally detailed loadout processes, because you don't want players just to be waiting."
The next generation PlayStation will feature backward compatibility with the PlayStation 4 as it features the same architecture. It will also have a disc drive.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Backwards compatible, disc drive, PSVR compatible, PS5 shaping up well thus far.
You fucking beat me to it!
I don't generally get hyped for PS consoles like I do Nintendo consoles, but with that backward compatibility and disc drive confirmed, PS5 will be an exception. I'm gonna be on board from the beginning this time.
Glad Sony changed their tune on BC. Apparently people do like playing old games.
I feel like PS4 BC was always going to be pretty obvious, thanks to the architecture.
Forget that, Sony downplayed BC because it was too difficult or impossible to do for PS4. They said nobody wants to play old games. Then they pushed PS3 games on PS Now. I just hate that bullshit, "lets downplay a feature because we don't have it." I hate it regardless who does it by the way.
PS5 the dream come true ^^
Hopefully they can also do it PS3 BC.
The PS5 has the power to emulate PS3. There is already a PS3 emulator for windows that works surprisingly well. So I believe Sony could produce and emulator but I'm doubting they will bother.
Navi, Zen 2, SSD, ray tracing, improved sound design, BC...music to my ears. Off to a great start.
Unfortunately going with SSD means we will probably be stuck with 1TB. Which sucks given games are nearing 100GB already. But I guess they feel its fine for the average consumer that just plays a few games.
Looks good, however is it only BC with PS4? Be better if it was all PS platforms.
I expect great things from PS5.
Looking like a Next-Gen level PS4 Pro. That's all it needs to be to be honest. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Dear sweet Jesus, do they mean 100% backward compatibility? Welp, guess I don't need to save for a PS4 after all. Might as well just start saving for a PS5 instead! 2020 is just around the corner!
But can it run Crysis?
As long they keep insulting us with their stupid censorship policy, It's bye bye sony. Still don't know if I'm going to Microsoft or Nintendo now.
Nuts if not BC.
