PS5 - What We Know So Far

Sony was notably absent from this year’s E3, and after Microsoft unveiled their next-gen system, Project Scarlett, a lot of people started to wonder what we could expect from the Playstation 5. Over the last few months, Sony has delivered some details about their next system. The PS5 should hit store shelves sometime next year, but all we know for sure is that it will not be before April 2020.

The PS5 will feature backward compatibility, allowing you to play your PS4 games on the PS5. This is exciting news for fans who weren’t able to continue to play PS1,2, and 3 games when they upgraded to the PS4. Sony has also shown that PS4 games will play better on the new console, thanks to the use of solid state drives (SSD), rather than traditional hard disk drives. In a demo, Sony showed 2018’s Spider-Man load in 1/10th of the time on the new system as it did on the PS4. In fact, the game loaded in less than 1 second on the PS5.

The PS5 will also support ray tracing, which is a technique typically used to improve the lighting on CGI in big blockbuster movies. Sony says that it could also be used to improve the audio capabilities of the system, which will already support 3D sound. Visually, the system will support 8K output, just like Microsoft’s next system. Without getting into the specifics of graphics cards and processors, sufficient to say that the PS5’s graphics will be far superior to those of the PS4, which are already pretty impressive.

One other thing that Sony has indicated about the PS5 is the inclusion and likely focus on VR. While some feel that VR is a fad that is starting to fade out, Sony seems to plan to improve the quality of the PSVR system with the PS5. There was no indication from the company about a price point for the system.

With many in the industry suggesting that this generation of consoles will be the last, Sony seems to be putting as much into the system as they can. Hopefully, we will get an official announcement from Sony soon about when we can expect the PS5, and exactly how much it’s going to cost.

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Story by Tim Howell from Zero Dark Nerdy