[ad_1]
[Update: Hold onto your hats, folks, the latest report on the development of the PS5 suggests that the console could be released this very year. That’s right.
SemiAccurate (via ResetEra) is claiming that it’s received some leaked information on the yet-to-be-announced console and says that the number of dev kits which have been distributed suggests the console could be released in 2018.
In addition to this, SemiAccurate also reports that Sony will use this console to push its VR efforts even further, with VR-tech baked in at the Silicon level, and will sport a GPU based on AMD’s Navi architecture with a CPU that’s potentially a custom item from AMD’s Zen line.
Though SemiAcccurate has a decent track record with its reports, having accurately reported Nintendo’s Nvidia partnership for the Switch and the PS4 specs back in 2012, we still say take this with a pinch of salt.
Though the specs sound plausible, a 2018 release date doesn’t. Regardless of how many developer kits that Sony has distributed, it feels to soon after the release of the PS4 Pro for the next PlayStation console. Besides that, now that we’re four months into the year it doesn’t feel like there’s sufficient build-up time to the introduction of a new console generation.]
There’s something about the launch of a new games console that’s unlike anything else. It only comes once every few years and between the reveal of the specs, the launch titles, and the pre-order dates we all lose our minds somewhat.
It’s been five years since Sony last revealed a brand new console generation so we know that when the time of the PS5 comes around, we’ll hardly be able to keep it together.
However, as great as that announcement always is, the run up to it is pretty spectacular too. The rumors, the anticipation, the infuriatingly convincing fan-made product renders, they’re all part of it.
At this point in time, Sony hasn’t confirmed there’s a PS5 in the woks and even though we’d love to be able to say we know there’s an announcement coming soon, we can;t. It’s hard to say when we might get our first look at the PlayStation 5.
Don’t despair though – while we can’t be sure when the PS5 will be revealed or even announced, we do that a PlayStation 5 will be coming eventually. Sony’s President and CEO, Shawn Layden, confirmed as much in an interview with Golem.de. Sure, he said it wouldn’t be any time soon. But that’s better than not coming at all!
It’s hard to fault Sony for looking before it takes the leap into the next generation of consoles. The PS4 Pro is still relatively new to the market and its direct competitor, Microsoft’s Xbox One X, is an even more recent release.
By introducing greater power and 4K capabilities to the market, mid-generation upgrades such as these have extended the lifespan of the current generation significantly. If we’re honest, we can’t really see any urgent need to start a new generation right now. And given Microsoft’s growing commitment to backwards compatibility, we think it’s key for Sony to really think about its next steps.
We imagine it’ll be another couple of years at least before a PlayStation 5 is necessary, or even wanted, and recent rumors have suggested that’s when it’ll arrive.
When Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony’s Worldwide Studios, was asked about the PS5, he responded that he thought the PS5 was a question of ‘if’ rather than ‘when’
Though Sony briefly had the most powerful console on the market with the PS4 Pro, Microsoft threw a spanner into the works in November 2017 with its Xbox One X. It’s too early to tell just yet but that could spell trouble for Sony.
But just because Microsoft has launched a new system doesn’t necessarily mean that Sony will counter immediately – there are good reasons to believe that Sony is less comfortable with the idea of taking a mobile phone-style “upgrade every year” approach to consoles in the future, including comments from Yoshida himself.
Also, it boils down to simple economics: it’s well documented that the longer a console can persist on the high-street shelves, the more profitable it becomes, as economies of scale reduce manufacturing costs, while a large install base means publishers can sell more copies of their latest games.
The PlayStation 4 is selling extremely well and although numbers are slowing, there are still plenty of fantastic games for the console to come.
What does that mean for the PS5? Will Sony’s fifth console come to fruition? What would it do differently? What can it do differently?
For right now, at least, we don’t have all the answers.
But instead of twiddling our thumbs and waiting for Sony to plop the next system on our laps, we’ve done some digging to try and get to the bottom of the mystery that’s kept us up at night: what is the PS5 and when is it coming out?
PS5 Release date
With no official word from Sony, it’s difficult to know exactly when we might get to see a PS5, so all we have for the moment is the guesswork of industry analysts to go on.
Analysts are predicting we could see the PlayStation 5 as soon as 2018 but the most likely outcome is 2019 or 2020. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, analyst Damian Thong (who previously predicted the PS4 Pro and Slim) suggested that the console would arrive in the latter half of 2018. Though this release seems very early, it’s supported by a report in SemiAcccurate which claims that the number of developer kits handed out points to plans for a 2018 release.
Another analyst, however, believes we’ll have to wait a little longer. Speaking to GamingBolt, Michael Pachter said that though he thinks the PS5 will be a half step and will be backwards compatible with the PS4 Pro he doesn’t think we’ll see it until “2019 or 2020 but probably 2019.”
This slightly later release, he says, would make more sense as it would fall in line with predictions for when the 4K TV market in the US will reach 50%. “I think Sony has probably got the next console cycle lined up already”, he says, “I think they already know what they’ve got to do.”
More recently Pachter reiterated this claim, saying that Sony would most likely release the new console in 2020. He added that at this time he thinks the PS4 Pro will become the base model PlayStation and will see a reduction in price.
PS5 news and rumors
Without any official PS5 announcement from Sony, solid news is pretty thin on the ground at the moment. But, as always, we do have rumors and we’ve collected and assessed them right here.
The SemiAcccurate report
SemiAccurate (via ResetEra) is claiming that it’s received some leaked information on the yet-to-be-announced console and says that the number of dev kits which have been distributed suggests the console could be released in 2018.
In addition to this, SemiAccurate also reports that Sony will use this console to push its VR efforts even further, with VR-tech baked in at the Silicon level, and will sport a GPU based on AMD’s Navi architecture with a CPU that’s potentially a custom item from AMD’s Zen line.
Though SemiAcccurate has a decent track record with its reports, having accurately reported Nintendo’s Nvidia partnership for the Switch and the PS4 specs back in 2012, we still say take this with a pinch of salt.
Though the specs sound plausible, a 2018 release date doesn’t. Regardless of how many developer kits that Sony has distributed, it feels to soon after the release of the PS4 Pro for the next PlayStation console. Besides that, now that we’re four months into the year it doesn’t feel like there’s sufficient build-up time to the introduction of a new console generation.
The Marcus Sellars claims
Renowned leaker Marcus Sellars has been making some bold claims on Twitter recently (Via GameRant), alleging that PS5 development kits are already in the hands of third-party developers. He also claimed that Nintendo is planning a Direct stream for March 8 (something which has since proven to be accurate). In fact, Sellars has been accurate with his claims a few times: recently he revealed Metroid Prime 4 was being developed by Bandai Namco.
However, Sellars didn’t provide any evidence to back up his claims so they really can’t be taken as anything more than rumor at the moment.
Something which may be interesting in relation to this, though, is that recently CD Projekt Red revealed that their upcoming title Cyberpunk 2077 was being developed for current and next generation consoles which came as a great surprise to many. Whether this means they’re one of the third-party developers at work with these rumored kits is yet to be seen.
Even if development kits are in the hands of developers, this doesn’t mean the PS5 is coming any time soon. It could still be another couple of years before any kind of reveal.
The patent
Something that does help Sellars case is a recently updated patent for backwards compatibility that’s been filed by Sony. Originally filed in 2015, the patent was updated in February to say “Backward compatibility testing of software in a mode that disrupts timing.” This is no guarantee that Sony is actually working on the technology for the PS5 (it could be creating an entirely separate peripheral that makes backwards compatibility possible) but it’s not impossible that this could be for a new generation console.
The PlayStation Plus news
Though there’s been no official word from Sony on the development of a PlayStation 5 just yet, a recent announcement in relation to the PlayStation Plus service has ignited some speculation. It’s been announced that from March 2019, PS Plus will no longer offer free PS3 or PSVita games and will instead focus on PS4 titles. This has led to some wondering over whether or not Sony is attempting to phase out these older generation titles in preparation for a new generation. This is, of course, pure speculation but it’s interesting that Sony would be willing to reduce its game offering to only two games (as it informed Polygon) without any other excuse than wishing to focus on titles for an already highly successful console. Whether Sony is truly making way for the PS5 or whether it’s going to offer a higher quality of PS4 game is unclear and it seems we’ll have to wait a while to find out what the final plan for PS Plus is.
We’ve got the TVs: can we have proper 4K gaming?
The PS4 Pro offers a tantalising hint of what 4K gaming could be like. But the stark fact remains: it still doesn’t have the grunt to do native 4K consistently.
Its “checkerboard” technique of taking single pixels and using each to render four pixels in 4K resolution is clever and it can do native 4K output but it often has to sacrifice resolution to keep performance consistent.
Chris Kingsley, CTO and co-founder of developer Rebellion, dangles an even more ambitious technological carrot in front of a putative PS5: “Obviously new hardware should be able to support 4K TVs and possibly even 8K TVs at a push!”
Native 4K support, surely, will be a basic requirement of the PlayStation 5. And if Sony cracks that particular problem with alacrity, it could even mean that a PlayStation 5 will arrive sooner than anticipated.
Aside from 4K visuals, if recent showings at GDC 2018 are anything to go by we certainly can expect the next generation to offer incredible visual advancements in terms of character models.
During GDC, we got a glimpse of what the next generation of games might look like and it’s left us extremely excited for the PS5.
Real-time ray tracing was revealed to be the next big thing in rendering while Epic Games gave us a taste of how it might be used to create the most lifelike characters ever. Using its capture technology, the Unreal Engine creator displayed a future with character models so realistic they bring us close to crossing the uncanny valley. Watch a performance from Andy Serkis below to see just how capable these new development technologies are:
“Honestly, between five and ten years from now, I don’t think you’re going to be able to tell the difference between the real and the virtual world,” Epic CTO Kim Libreri told GamesIndustry.biz, “You’ll see hardware that can support these kinds of capabilities pretty shortly, and then, finally, the greatest blockbuster with the most complicated effects, within ten years, you’ll be able to do that in real-time.”
When Libreri tells us we’ll see hardware that can support this technology “pretty shortly” we can’t be sure, but we like to think she’s talking about the yet-to-be-announced PS5.
The VR effect
Sony recently became the first console manufacturer to embrace virtual reality, thanks to the PlayStation VR, but if you examine PlayStation VR closely – and observe how it operates on the PS4 Pro – it invites speculation about how a PS5 might take VR to a new level.
Currently, PlayStation VR operates at lower resolution than the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive – but, as it stands, even its current incarnation almost pushes the base PlayStation 4 beyond its limits. Running a PlayStation VR on a PS4 Pro brings improved frame-rates, which are very handy indeed in terms of the overall VR experience, but even the PS4 Pro can’t overcome the resolution constraints set by the PlayStation VR headset.
Sony will want to return to the market with a second, markedly higher-tech iteration of PlayStation VR
So it’s a good bet that, presuming PlayStation VR is successful (and it already appears to be catching on) Sony will want to return to the market with a second, markedly higher-tech iteration: which would provide an obvious selling point for the PlayStation 5.
And if a PlayStation VR 2 headset could be sold without an external black box, it should be markedly cheaper, further accelerating VR’s march into the mainstream. A recent report from SemiAcccurate which claims that the PS5 will have virtual reality capabilities built-in at silicon level suggests this will indeed be the case.
Rebellion’s Kingsley makes another good point about second-generation VR. “Anything that reduces the leads has to be a good thing,” he says.
The umbilical cord which currently attaches VR headset-wearers to their consoles or PCs obviously goes against VR’s entire immersive nature, and we’re already beginning to see, for example, a third-party implementation for the HTC Vive that renders it wireless. It’s a safe bet that the capacity for running a wireless PlayStation VR 2 will be built into the PS5.
But Kingsley’s PlayStation VR 2 wish-list goes further: “Wide vertical and horizontal field-of-view would be top of my list, and of course, that would require 4K resolution per eye, and high dynamic range would be great too.”
HDR and wider fields of view should be achievable but sadly, we don’t reckon full 4K VR is likely to be a possibility even for the PS5. As Kingsley points out, that would require 4K rendering per eye, which equates to 8K rendering overall, which we expect to be beyond the PS5’s capabilities.
That said, perhaps Sony will find some clever technological bodge to get around that before it releases its fifth PlayStation console.
What form will the PS5 take?
It has been suggested that future consoles could take radically different forms to current ones, thanks to advances in cloud computing bringing about the ability to stream games, thereby doing away with the components that make consoles so bulky. But we don’t reckon Sony will take a more Nintendo-like approach and put the PS5 in a tiny box.
One reason for that is that with the PS4, Sony has only just committed to using what are basically the innards of a PC – the first three PlayStation variants used proprietary components which, in the PS3, were so esoteric that the console flopped. Developers, certainly, are massively relieved that the PS4 took the PC route.
“We always want fast CPUs and GPUs, but lots of fast RAM is also very important – it’s no use having fast processors if they are starved of data.”
Chris Kingsley
“Developers want the ability to make the best games using the minimum amount of effort. We want to focus on being creative and getting things to just work,” Kingsley says. “So the hardware should be based around current console hardware, which is in turn based on PC hardware. We always want fast CPUs and GPUs, but lots of fast RAM is also very important – it’s no use having fast processors if they are starved of data.”
All the above are achievable, but will the PS5 still have a hard disk?
Sony Computer Entertainment President and CEO Andrew House spoke at the PS4’s launch about how deciding to put hard disks and 8Gb of RAM in the PS4 were both “Billion-dollar decisions”. The fact that Sony has now made external hard drive support possible for the PS4 and Pro is a step in the right direction and this is something that could be carried over the the PS5, which will undoubtedly have to deal with even larger 4K assets.
It seems certain that PlayStation is very keen to hear what its community thinks. Very recently a group called PlayStation Voice sent out surveys to members of its closed community asking them what their expectations of the PS5 are. One community member posted the email they received and found themselves removed from the group for breaking its non-disclosure agreements.
According to PSU PlayStation Voice is a community run by third-party consumer insight agency, Join the Dots. Once information has been gathered, it’s fed back to clients, the client in this case presumably being Sony PlayStation.
Admittedly, this doesn’t tell us much about PS5 itself, other than that things are likely to be still in the very early stages. While it’s unlikely that Sony would use the information gathered from its communities to decide exactly which features will be included in the console, the ideas of fans can certainly spark a good deal of inspiration.
Streaming games
Of course, if games were just streamed to the PS5 that problem would disappear entirely, and Sony already has a game-streaming service in the form of PlayStation Now.
So why isn’t this more of a definite feature rather than something on our wishlist? Well, Sony is remaining tight-lipped about PlayStation Now uptake figures, but we suspect they are pretty unimpressive. It has certainly had issues with setting the right subscription charges, given that PlayStation Now effectively gives backwards compatibility – a “luxury” that was previously free for owners of PlayStation 2s and 3s.
There would be nothing to stop Sony launching a small form-factor cloud-based version of the console for those with mega-fast broadband
But the biggest issue is broadband speeds. Even 4K TV requires a minimum of 25Mbps broadband in order to provide satisfactory streaming, and it’s doubtful whether 4K game streaming – with extra information on top of the visual side – would even work reliably at such speeds. There would be nothing to stop Sony launching a small form-factor cloud-based version of the console for those with mega-fast broadband, perhaps with a mobile phone-style subscription model that has an upfront hardware costs.
But for the PS5 to sell anything like its predecessors, there would have to be a conventional version with similar innards to the PS4.
In his recent autumn statement, chancellor Philip Hammond announced an infrastructure investment aimed at bringing fast broadband and 5G mobile data to the UK. But the earliest that would have an impact would be 2021, and the PS5 will almost certainly arrive before then. Perhaps its first mid-cycle update, though, will be a streaming version which takes advantage of burgeoning 5G networks?
Optical discs or not?
The rise of download games, which continue to eat into the physical disc market, means that pundits have been predicting that consoles will go discless for about a decade now. However, our guess is that the PS5 won’t be the first system to risk venturing down that road, at least not until it catches wind of Microsoft doing the same thing.
Sony has taken a lot of (justifiable) flak for not putting a 4K Blu-ray drive in the PS4 Pro – making it a less attractive purchase for film and TV buffs than the Xbox One S.
Surveys continue to show that gamers are still attached to the possibility of buying games on physical discs – not least because they can then sell them (a practice that the games industry hates), and due to their persistent hard disk space issues, although it’s only the current generation of consoles which has insisted on installing entire contents of Blu-ray discs onto hard disks.
If Sony were to axe the Blu-ray drive from the PS5, gamers would expect several terabytes of storage in compensation.
Kingsley gives a developer’s view on the topic: “I think the days of delivering films and games via disc are on the decline, as most people are going digital; however, some people like physical discs, so who knows whether that decline will level out and remain present but at a lower level than now?”
Download figures have been on the rise over the last year but EA CFO Blake Jorgensen has said that he thinks consoles and disc drives will continue to stick around.
“Consoles and disc drives probably stay around for a long period of time […] I think it’s the consumer deciding what’s the easiest way for them to buy a game.
“And it may mean they no longer have a store down the street from them so they decide to buy it [digitally] maybe it’s easier for them to do.”
So when can we expect the PS5?
Given that the PlayStation 4 was launched in 2013 and Sony’s previous consoles arrived in six-year intervals, it would be easy to project that it will launch the PlayStation 5 in 2019. The sort of technology available then should easily allow full native 4K games without saddling the PS5 with a massive price-tag and, by 2019, 4K TVs will be the norm, rather than the exception, in the average household.
2020 might be the year in which Sony unleashes the PS5 on the world, as the first native 4K console with wireless VR … as long as Microsoft doesn’t get there first
So it would be a surprise if Sony doesn’t want to capitalise on that at the earliest possible juncture. However, Kingsley points at the PS4 Pro, and reckons that could have an effect on the length of the current console cycle: “It’s a difficult one to judge, but overall I think it’s fair to say that the overall cycle will lengthen slightly.”
Especially if the PS4 Pro wildly outsells the base PS4, which admittedly isn’t something we anticipate happening once it has reached a critical mass of households with 4K TVs.
So perhaps 2020 might be the year in which Sony unleashes the PS5 on the world, as the first native 4K console with wireless VR … as long as Microsoft doesn’t get there first.
What games can we expect to see on PS5?
If the backwards compatibility patent mentioned above is true, we can expect to see our whole PS4 library available to play on the PS5. Or perhaps we’ll see another round of remasters as we did when moving from the PS3 to the PS4. However, we imagine there will be some games being developed specifically for this new console generation and the power it’s likely to offer.
Already we’ve seen CD Projekt Red mention that it’s developing for this generation as well as the next and alongside the rumors that there are already developers kits out in the open, we think there’s a good chance that Cyberpunk 2077 will be one of the early PS5 titles.
[ad_2]
Source link