Back in June Sony responded to PS5 release date rumors, saying the new console “almost certainly won’t be released in 2018”. This is sad news for PS4 lovers, with the newly released Xbox One X. The Xbox One X is claimed to be 40% more powerful than the PS4. With its super slick design, an impressive games list, 8 core CPU, six tera-flop GPU and 12GB of GDDR5 RAM! This is the most powerful console ever!
Of course, Playstationers are a loyal bunch and will be left wondering, but what about the PS5? Well, here’s everything we know so far!
When is The PS5 coming out?
Head of Playstation’s North American Division, Sean Layden, spoke with a German magazine and has 100% confirmed that the PlayStation 5 is going to happen! PlayStation Chief, Andrew House, has also said that this will be the PlayStation line up for a “substantial period of time”, which rings true with earlier rumors of the release date being post-2018. Nevertheless, this certain confirmation that it will occur is positive news! In addition, the Xbox one X’s power, placing it significantly ahead of the PS4 Pro, albeit at a higher price, will no doubt be something that Sony will want to address!
This quote from 2014, may shine some more light on the situation:
“It’s really up to the game creators,” “If they still feel that we need more machine power — ‘we want to realize this and that and that, but we cannot do it with PS4′ — if that’s the case, there’s a good reason to have PS5, so that developers can create their vision. So, we’ll see.”
– Shuhei Yoshida, president of Worldwide Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment.
If this is anything to go by, which it should be, then the release of the PS4 Pro towards the end of last year will have filled this gap and offered games producers the extra power they need for the time being, thus it makes it plausible to speculate we may not see the new console until later in 2019.
What new features can we expect to see?
The PS4 Pro is the most powerful home console to date, but it still won’t match up to the power of high-end gaming PCs. We saw the PS3 pushed further and further before the release of the PS4, with games like The Last of Us, from Naughty Dog really pushing it beyond what we thought it could be capable and being left wondering; why didn’t all games look this good?
This came largely down to the system’s architecture, which made it harder to develop for. The PS4 was designed to be more like a PC, thus making it easier for developers to work with. With this in mind, Sony clearly has their games developers in mind when producing new consoles, therefore this can give us some scope for how they may choose to develop the console. Additional power can be expected in order to push it ahead of its main competitor, the Xbox One X, whilst we can likely expect additional interactivity features to further propel it ahead.
We saw the PS4 begin to expand on such functionality, with the expansion of its controller features. The new controller included a small speaker, which allowed in-game “phone calls” to be emitted from this phone-like speaker closer to the user, thus increasing this sense of in-game immersion.
The controller now also featured a trackpad in the middle of the controller, such as that you may find on a laptop computer. In addition to adding additional in-game functionality, this also greatly increased the usability of the on-console browser. Previous iterations of the browser application, such as on the PS3, and attempting to maneuver using the analog stick was truly painstaking. The trackpad truly opened up the browser for easy surfing of Facebook, Youtube and HTML-5 browser games, such as those found with online games.
In addition the this, we will likely see the extra power see VR pushed to further limits, as this has felt somewhat limited on the PS4 thus far.
What will it cost?
As we don’t even know the specs for the console yet, it’s hard to be too specific on what kind of price we can expect the device to be. Having said this, with the Xbox One X coming out at just beneath the $500 dollar mark, we can likely expect similar kind of price point for the PS5.
Despite what it costs, rest assured Playstation lovers will be excited for the release! And it will be exciting to see the further features, power and what other ideas the geniuses at Sony can cook up!
