On November 15th 2013, Sony released the PS4 to the world. It went on to become the best selling console of the generation. Excellent exclusive titles, consumer friendly policies and an eye catching design helped propel PlayStation to new heights. Now 7 years later, the next chapter in the PlayStation story is about to unfold.
This is PlayStation 5.
This is highly likely to be the design of the PS5. The original image of the console as shown below, was posted to 4chan, a site notorious for posting of insider information. The quality of the design as shown in the leaked image, make this design highly credible. With just weeks to go until Sony unveils more information about the PS5, I’m convinced we’re looking at the real deal. The interesting cross shaped design might raise some eye brows with the people over at Redmond. Microsoft’s Xbox console of course using the ‘X’ moniker for branding.
Design
In recent weeks, images of the PS5 dev kit have been floating around the internet with some claiming this to be the final design based on patents. It is common for console manufacturers to publish not just patents for final designs but also for dev kits. To be absolutely clear, if Sony released the devkit as the final design, most people would struggle to fit it in their TV unit. I think any reasonable person can scratch this monstrosity out of their mind.
Now on to the likely final (and plausible) design. From the leaked image on 4chan, we can now infer much of the design of the PS5. It appears to have an interlocking centre that reveals the power button and the Bluetooth pairing button. To the rear, of the console, the interlocking design provides quick and easy access to ports for connecting cables and other peripherals. The design feels like a refinement of the PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro design language. It uses the same matte textured black exterior casing.
Hardware
- Bespoke AMD Ryzen CPU with 8 Cores. 7 nm zen2 chipset.
- Custom AMD Navi GPU with 36 compute units at 2000Mhz.
- PCIe 4.0 SSD with 448 GB/s read speed.
- GDDR 6 RAM.
- Hardware accelerated Ray Tracing support.
- Output resolution of up to 8K with full 4K support.
- 4K Blu-Ray support with 100GB optical disks.
- 3D spatial audio support.
Controller
- DualShock 5.0.
- Solid and weighted design.
- Light bar removed.
- Larger touch sensing area.
- Haptic Rumble to simulate textures.
- Speaker and for the first time, a Microphone for voice control.
Additional Features
- Backwards compatibility with all PS4 games due to similar design architecture (Support for prior generations via PS Now).
- Configurable game installations with support for installing just single player campaigns or just multiplayer portions of each game.
- Smaller game installs with dramatically faster install times.
- Support for PSVR with a rumoured generation 2 headset on the way.
- Cloud gaming support.
- Dynamic home screen that displays live elements such as newly available missions for example.
- Voice control via headset or DualShock 5.0
Pricing
Pricing remains difficult to pin point. Multiple sources have suggested different prices. Around £449/$499 seems to be a common consensus (other currencies will vary)
Summary
Many of the features described in this article have already been confirmed by Sony themselves in interviews with Wired magazine. Other features have been leaked by reputable sources like Slash Leaks with good track records. I’m pretty convinced that the design and features described in this article are the real deal. Either way, we’ll know for certain by the middle of this year. The future of PlayStation looks (and sounds) exciting.
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