From solid-state drives to adaptive triggers for the new controller, Sony doesn’t tell-all, but it tells a lot.
Sony has been pretty quiet about its next gaming console since its announcement in April, leaving E3 in the hands of Xbox and Nintendo. All we knew is that the machine would be backwards-compatible with PlayStation 4 titles Now the company breaks its silence and unveils some interesting details about its upcoming gaming machine.
The tech-focused news outlet, Wired, sat down with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan and system architect Mark Cerny to discuss the aptly named PlayStation 5.
The PlayStation 5 is going to run on similar hardware to Xbox’s Project Scarlett. That means it will feature a CPU based on the AMD Ryzen and a GPU similar to the Navi line of cards. Solid-state drives are all the rage, but the exact size of the drive included with the console was not discussed, which could prove worrisome considering how massive games are already and how much bigger they are likely to become.
To combat the disk space issue, players will be able to select portions of games to have installed. So if you only want to play the campaign of a title, you will have the option to only install that, the same thing with the multiplayer. Players will also be able to delete portions after the fact, so once you beat a game and want to focus on multiplayer only, you can uninstall the story portion.
Regardless of how much storage will be available, games will load a LOT faster on the SSD than on a standard optical hard drive, so there’s that benefit for sure. For example, quick travel in Spider-Man goes from taking 15 seconds to .8. Physical games will also be installed on 100 GB Blu-ray discs but if its anything like our current-gen, that won’t really matter if the entire game needs to be installed on the console anyway. Another nice feature coming to PS5 is the inclusion of a 4K Blu-ray player, finally bringing the company to par with something Xbox has done since the Xbox One S.
The user interface will be getting a huge revamp, taking it from the relatively basic UI found on the PS4 to a dynamic view of everything going on within the PS5 ecosystem. You will even be able to start playing with friends straight from the home screen. No visuals were given in regards to the UI however.
Perhaps most exciting to me, is the information we gained about the upcoming controller, which doesn’t have an official name but will be probably be dubbed the DualShock 5, if not, cool! And weird considering they are keeping the same naming scheme for the console itself.
The controllers will come with “adaptive triggers” which will change how easy or difficult it is to pull them based on the functions that are being performed. The haptic feedback is getting an upgrade in what sounds like Sony’s take on Nintendo’s HD Rumble found in their Joy-Cons and the quality of the speaker is getting improved. This means players will experience a completely different kind of physicality when playing games. It seems like everything will be programmed with a deliberate tactile experience in mind that far exceeds a simple vibrating motor in each handle.
The controllers will receive an upgraded battery as well as a USB Type-C connection to bring them up to speed with the growing industry standard. Wired mentions that the unit they got to play with looked a lot like a regular DualShock 4, assuming that means there’s a touchpad and a light bar on top of the previously mentioned features.
And that’s about it for what we learned about Sony’s upcoming console. Definitely check out the entire interview though for a more thorough examination of some of the more technical aspects like ray-tracing.
Are you excited about the PlayStation 5 from what you learned? What else would you like to be included with the console or its controller?
Source: Wired