The wait is finally over: Sony has officially announced its newest PlayStation console.
In an interview with Wired, Mark Cerny, one of the lead developers for PlayStation’s next-generation console, revealed it will be a massive upgrade for the industry. When asked what those upgrades are, Cerny stressed that 3D audio levels will be improved greatly because of a custom made AMD chip.
“It’s been little bit of a frustration that audio did not change too much between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4,” Cerny said. “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.”
The hardware horsepower Cerny mentions is no joke. Along with the AMD chip, PlayStation 5 will include an eight-core central processing unit and a graphics processing unit with ray tracing that’ll help with lighting environments and textures. Basically, it’s going to make gameplay look crisper.
Other than the hardware additions, Cerny is confident that PlayStation’s next console will deliver more immersion. Immersion has been the forefront of Playstation’s virtual reality headset, which not only is compatible with the PS5 but also allows players to feel they’re a part of the game's world.
Cerny is not only breaking the foundation of how consoles can immerse players into games but also what developers can do with the hardware itself.
The PS5 will include a solid-state drive, so the console will have a new range of power never seen before. The power, Cerny stresses, will cut loading times astronomically. To explain, Cerny compares Spider-Man loading on a PS4 Pro versus Spider-Man loading on the new console. For the PS4 Pro, it takes 15 seconds to load into the busy streets of Manhattan, New York. For the new console, it takes a mere 0.8 seconds.
It seems like back-end power and accessibility is what Sony is focusing on for the next generation. The solid-state drive will allow developers to expand the games to new heights, where Sony and PlayStation will have more accessibility, freedom and power to make the games what they want.
Multiple questions have been answered, but Cerny and PlayStation still have left a few up in the air, such as price points, a release date and game launches. Cerny said the console will be have an appropriate price for what the company is offering consumers, but the console will not be releasing this year.
The ambiguity leaves PlayStation with a little wiggle room before saying anything else about the console. With it not being at the E3 exposition this year, PlayStation has to lead the discussion sooner rather than later. If it keeps the console in the discussion of gamers, PlayStation won’t have to worry about it becoming obsolete before it hits the shelves.
