Talk of what’s next for the upcoming generation in gaming has been ramping up over the past several months, and for good reason! With more and more evidence mounting at a 2020 launch for the beginning of next-gen, the industry is alight with what could be next. Luckily, we have more than just rumors and vague reports, we have a direct confirmation from Sony about what the PlayStation 5 (the now-official name) will have to offer.
Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan and system architect Mark Cerny recently spoke with Wired once more to talk about the upcoming system as well as confirm two big things that have been circulating since pretty much these next-gen talks began:
- Yes, it will be called the PlayStation 5
- Holiday 2020 release
Cerny also clarified details about the system’s ray-tracing capabilities, saying “There is ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware,” he says, “which I believe is the statement that people were looking for.” Cerny also mentioned that the PS5’s SSD isn’t just formidable on its own, it’s also a huge leap forward in efficiency, which means various data blocks will read much faster in games.
“If you look at a game like Marvel’s Spider-Man,” Cerny says, “there are some pieces of data duplicated 400 times on the hard drive.” This also means that game installation will also see a slight change as well, mentioning that the PS5 will be improved by the simplified game data, which also caused Sony to rethink how they handle storage. “Rather than treating games like a big block of data,” Cerny says, “we’re allowing finer-grained access to the data.”
The PlayStation Blog also added onto the original story by Wired by adding a few details about the new system’s controller:
“To that end, there are two key innovations with the PlayStation 5’s new controller. First, we’re adopting haptic feedback to replace the “rumble” technology found in controllers since the 5th generation of consoles. With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud.
“The second innovation is something we call adaptive triggers, which have been incorporated into the trigger buttons (L2/R2). Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions. Game creators have started to receive early versions of the new controller, and we can’t wait to see where their imagination goes with these new features at their disposal.”
To learn even more about the what the next generation has to offer with the PlayStation 5, you can check out the full breakdown right here.
