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Sony’s PlayStation 5: Everything we know so far

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The time is drawing near for the next generation of game consoles, as the PS4 and Xbox One are certainly nearing retirement age… Sony has dominated the current-gen console wars with its PlayStation 4 selling 94 million units. So it’s safe to say the world is eagerly anticipating Sony’s follow-up.

Microsoft’s digital-only Xbox One S version is imminent, and with that its next-gen console isn’t far off either rumoured for release in 2020. This means that Sony’s likely planning a similar launch date.

John Kodera, deputy president of Sony Interactive Entertainment said that “The PS4 is entering [the] final phase of its life cycle,” during a corporate meeting in 2018. The president of Sony, Kenichiro Yoshida, confirmed Kodera’s statement by saying that the company is cooking up “next-generation hardware.”

It’s also worth remembering that Sony’s consoles typically have a five- to six-year life span The PS4 has been around for about five years now which points to a 2020 release for the PS5.

Design: Nearing expectations

Although we don’t have access to Sony’s top-secret hardware design department, what we do know, is that computing components continue to get faster, thinner, and smaller. So we’re expecting one fine-looking console, especially with Sony’s design track record.

Then, Sony will likely opt for an onboard hard-drive, because we’re not expecting the company to opt for streaming-only yet. In the PlayStation ecosystem, there’s no indication that it’ll give up physical and downloaded games just yet. Add this to the inevitable need for multiple ports and room for sufficient cooling, and the PS5 will probs take up a decent amount of room under your TV.

Keep in mind that we haven’t seen any genuine leaked images of the PS5 (good work console department!). We’ve only come across a few artists renders (like the one above by LetsGoDigital which has been debunked, but looked pretty good at the time), but there’s no indication that any of the images we’ve seen yet are close to the real thing.

Specs: A definite upgrade

They’ve had five-odd years of hardware advancements, so Sony better represent with its upcoming console. The PlayStation 5’s insides will likely be very advanced. It needs to power the best 4K games and VR experiences that 2019 (or 2020) has to offer, after all.

One of the best rumours thus far speculates that the PS5 will have a dedicated graphics chip, rather than combining graphics and processing on the same bit of silicon. Backing up that idea is news that the next-generation AMD graphics tech for the PS5 is already in production. These advanced 7nm chips, codenamed Navi, are said to be as powerful as some of the best graphics cards of today.

Other rumours suggest that one of Sony’s principal programmers is already hard at work on adapting AMD’s Ryzen technology, pointing to a major performance boost for the internal guts of the PS5.

When it comes down to raw processing power, the PS5 is bound to overshadow its predecessor. A recent tweet (above) details the upcoming console’s APU (Advanced Processing Unit). It’s apparently called Gonzalo and will offer an eight-core processor, a 3.2GHz clock speed, and a 1GHz GPU clock speed. In short, a significant and welcome improvement over the PS4 which should ensure it runs at 4K/60fps smoothly.

Controllers: hit or miss?

The most recent leak is one that’s got many of the PS community up-in-arms. Firstly, no-one seems to know how legitimate the leak is, so don’t let it rile you up just yet.

Ray Sekiro, the editor of a PlayStation-centric blog called Remote Play, who has tweeted an image of what appears to the successor to the DualShock 4. And it looks… believable?

The controller is rumoured to be branded (yep, you’ve guessed it) DualShock 5, and looks expected to include a touchscreen display. Which will replace the touch-sensitive pad on the 4th iteration.

Many have shunned the supposed leak, saying the design doesn’t resemble PlayStation design, and that the controller is too bulky overall. This might be the case, but the controller does resemble Razer’s PS controller a lot, and we won’t be surprised if this does turn out to be the upcoming DualShock.

Soooo…?

As always, it’s worth taking these leaks with a healthy pinch of scepticism. Sony won’t be revealing a new console anytime soon, what with the company skipping E3 and all.

But with the Xbox Two aka Xbox Scarlett tipped for a 2020 launch, we think all the signs point to a 2019 launch for the PlayStation 5 (the early console catches the gamer worms, yeah?), and it’ll likely take place at the PlayStation Experience later this year. If not in 2019, then definitely 2020. Either way, we’re probably going to need a better TV.

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