Although none of us were surprised to hear that Sony has been hard at work on its PlayStation 5 console for some time now, today’s confirmation definitely brought a reassured smile to many faces.
In an interview with Wired, Sony’s Mark Cerny — who returns as system architect, after being a big part of the PS4’s creation — confirmed that the company has been developing its next console for a while now. Within the same conversation, the technological creator revealed some interesting information about the device, including the fact that it will support 8K, ray tracing and 3D sound technologies.
Of course, we’re talking about an entirely new piece of hardware, which will include the following important pieces:
- An eight-core CPU based on AMD’s third-gen Ryzen line, built on the chip company’s latest 7nm Zen 2 process
- A custom GPU based on AMD’s Radeon Navi hardware
- Custom unit on AMD chip just for 3D audio
- Solid state drive
- Disc drive
As per usual, there had been talk that the PlayStation 5 would be a digital only system. Thankfully, that is not going to be the case. The PS5 will, in fact, support physical, disc based games. That said, we’re not sure if those will be Blu-ray discs, or something else.
Mark Cerny also stated that, thanks to the new SSD, games will load a lot faster than before. He cited an example of a time when he played Marvel’s Spider-Man on the PS5 and noted that the loading times dropped from 15 seconds to just 0.8 seconds.
If you’re wondering about a new PSVR unit, you’ll have to wait to find out about that. All that was said is that the current PSVR headset will continue to work with PS5. So, too, will PlayStation 4 games, thanks to backwards compatibility.
Don’t expect to be able to purchase or play PlayStation 5 anytime this year, though. The console isn’t expected to release until 2020. However, you can rest assured that developers are hard at work on titles for it, including improved versions of games like Death Stranding, which will apparently release on both PS4 and PS5.
Here’s hoping its launch line-up won’t include a new Knack game.