The highly-anticipated Playstation 5 is expected to be available some time late this year, bringing a bunch of improved specs to the console world. No official release date was given on Sony’s Playstation Blog livestream, though lead system architect Mark Cerny went into extensive detail on what game-changing tech will be featured on the console. This announcement comes just two days after the full specs for Microsoft’s Xbox Series X were released.
As the console wars continue, Microsoft has been divulging information regarding the next-gen Xbox on a steady basis. The Xbox Series X was announced at The Game Awards last December, and has since been revealed to be Microsoft’s most powerful gaming console yet. While Sony has kept quiet on some features, plenty of information has already been released regarding the Playstation 5’s hardware. Like Xbox, the system will utilize solid state drive storage and support older games with backward compatibility. The system will also support PSVR.
A 2019 interview with Mark Cerny revealed that Playstation 5 will be a big step up from its previous generation. That sentiment was reiterated during Sony’s announcement broadcast, where Cerny went into detail about the console’s advanced loading speeds thanks to the addition of an SSD.
Playstation 5’s processing hardware includes an 8-core 7nm Zen 2 AMD processor running at 3.5GHz. It also features a Radeon Navi GPU — with 10.28 teraflops and 36 compute units running at 2.23GHz — that has been modified specifically for the PS5 . Other specs include 16GB of GDDR6 RAM and a 825GB SSD — an inclusion that will drastically improve loading times.
Of course, there is no telling how the global coronavirus pandemic will affect the upcoming consoles. Companies all across the world are halting business in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus. Sony, along with countless other brands, has already sent numerous employees home due to coronavirus concerns. Building and perfecting a top-of-the-line gaming console from home may be more than difficult, which could affect Playstation 5’s release.
For now, the Playstation 5 is expected to drop sometime during the 2020 holiday season.
