Buckle up folks! The ride into the next generation of gaming consoles has officially started today as Sony decided to share the first-ever information about their upcoming home console, the PlayStation 5. Besides several details about the technical prowess we now also know that the PS5 will not launch this year.
In an exclusive interview with Wired, Mark Cerny, the chief architect of the PlayStation 4 and now PlayStation 5, talked about Sony’s vision for the next generation. And what we’ve learned so far is highly promising for a true generational leap.
First up, the technical details. The PlayStation 5 will continue using AMD’s CPU and GPU technology, just as it was the case with the PS4. It is powered by an 8-core CPU based on the yet-unreleased Ryzen 3 architecture. A wise decision which will no doubt help future-proof the PS5. In terms of graphics, a custom AMD Navi GPU is going to take the task of creating beautiful visuals. Noteworthy here is the inclusion of Ray Tracing, a cutting-edge technology which many did not expect to see in the new consoles. Furthermore, the PlayStation 5’s storage system is supposedly even more advanced than what’s on offer on the PC market today. Cerny demonstrated the blazingly fast SSD storage in the PlayStation 5 by comparing the same loading scenes in Marvel’s Spider-Man and the results are stunning. What took the PS4 15 seconds of load time was completed on the PS5 in less than a second.
This all is really nice but maybe what is of much higher importance with the fact that AMD is once again providing the silicone is that this enables the PlayStation 5 to play PlayStation 4 games natively. That’s massive! True backwards compatibility between the PS5 and the PS4 is confirmed which should make the decision for existing PS4 users only that more easy since they wil be able to play all their existing games on their new PlayStation 5.
The PS4 infamously broke the long tradition of Sony consoles offering backwards compatibility which led to much disappointment. Nonetheless, the great library of the PS4 was enough for the system to lead the eight console generation in terms of sales by a wide margin. With the PS5 having this very nice boon, things look splendid for Sony in the next generation.
