It's no secret that Sony is hard at work developing the PlayStation 5. The system is due out at the end of the year after-all. However, the bits of confirmed information we have on the system are few and far between. For instance, we know the PS5 will boast a solid-state drive (SSD) that will reduce load times to near zero. We know it will be called the PlayStation 5. We've heard rumors that single player will play a major part of the system's development philosophy, and we've also heard rumors of it having true backwards compatibility.
Wednesday, marked the day where a lot of these rumors become fact one way or the other. Microsoft recently dropped a bunch of specs on the Xbox Series X, and now it's Sony's turn to peddle their wares.
- Mark Cerny is at the podium, underscoring Sony's core philosophy behind console development.
- They expect developers will need less than a month to get up to speed with working on the PS5. Compared to 1-2 months for PS4.
- Confirmed there will be a Solid State Drive, which we already knew. Hard drive was a major limiting factor on the PS4. On PS4, you can read at 50-100 MB/s, so it takes roughly 20 seconds to load a GB of data. PS5 SSD will load at 5 GB/s, roughly 100 times faster than the PS4.
- Installation during patches will look very different as the SSD has no need of creating new files.
- I feel like I'm back in college. Dana Carvey is teaching me Gaming Systems Architecture.
- SSD swaps will be possible. Can be purchased on the open market, but must be as fast as the stock SSD in the PS5. They will announce ones that are compatible after launch, don't buy one until then.
- New GPU supports Ray-tracing, and backwards compatibility. He didn't specify how far back backwards compatibility would go, but he did say PS4.
- Friendly reminder that this is the presentation that was originally for the Game Developer's Conference. This is not a sales pitch, or at least we hope it isn't.
- 3D Audio is the third major focus. The PS5 will boast incredible sound detailing, allowing more objects to create 3d sound than ever.
- Headphone compatibility with 3D audio is largely complete, other forms of audio delivery are going to be worked on throughout the next two years.
- That's about the gist of it. Again, look forward to a consumer unveiling which will be a bit more exciting for the average viewer. I live and work in this world, and I didn't understand half of it.
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