Everything we know about the PlayStation 5: Specs, reveal date, games and more

Tuffcub 11/06/20 Comments Closed

With the PlayStation 5 reveal scheduled for this evening, we thought we would catch you up on everything we already know about the console from the last year of leaks, teases and announcements.

Use this as a nice refresher on all the specs, the controller, and every confirmed game so far, and then join us for all the news coming out of Sony’s Future of Gaming event at 9PM UK time.

When will it be released?

Sony have confirmed that despite the COVID-19 pandemic the PlayStation 5 will launch holiday season 2020. They normally release new consoles around the end of October or early November, but no firm date has been given yet.

What will the price be?

The big question and one that Sony has yet to reveal. Estimate ranges from £400 to £650, we’re expecting something in the middle around £500. PS5 architect Mark Cerny has said, “I believe that we will be able to release it at an SRP [suggested retail price] that will be appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set.”

Hardware Specifications

CPU	8 Zen 2 Cores @ 3.5Ghz w/ SMT (variable)
GPU	10.28 TFLOPS – 36 CUs @ 2.26Ghz (variable)
Memory	16 GB GDDR6 (448GB/s)
Internal Storage	825 GB Custom NVME SSD
I/O Throughput	5.5 GB/s (Raw), 8-9 GB/s (Compressed)
Expandable Storage	Approved M.2 third party SSDs in dedicated expansion bay
External Storage	USB External HDD Support for PS4 games
Optical Dirve	Ultra HD Blu-ray, up to 100GB/disc
Video Output	HDMI 2.1 – Up to 4K at 120Hz, 8K, VRR
Audio	Tempest Engine 3D audio

The big news here is the SSD drive which Sony have customised so data can be retrieved incredibly quickly. Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney was speaking on the Summer Game Fest stream and said “The hardware that Sony is launching is absolutely phenomenal. Not only an unprecedented amount of graphics power, but also a completely new storage architecture that blows past architectures out of the water and is far ahead of even the state-of-the-art, highest-end PCs you can buy.”

The new drive should mean games are smaller, at present data is duplicated across the PS4 hard drive so it can be accessed quickly, “If you look at a game like Marvel’s Spider-Man,” commented Cerny, “there are some pieces of data duplicated 400 times on the hard drive.”

There are also two new engines: The Tempest Engine will help create richer, more natural sounds, and the Geometry Engine helps developers shift more triangles across the screen.

For a full breakdown on the new hardware click here.

The new controller

Goodbye DualShock, hello sleek and sexy PlayStation 5 DualSense controller!

Don’t worry if white isn’t your thing, the recent “Future of Play” teaser has seemed to show a black version of the controller as well. Here’s more from Sony about the new device.

After thoughtful consideration, we decided to keep much of what gamers love about DualShock 4 intact, while also adding new functionality and refining the design. Based on our discussions with developers, we concluded that the sense of touch within gameplay, much like audio, hasn’t been a big focus for many games. We had a great opportunity with PS5 to innovate by offering game creators the ability to explore how they can heighten that feeling of immersion through our new controller. This is why we adopted haptic feedback, which adds a variety of powerful sensations you’ll feel when you play, such as the slow grittiness of driving a car through mud. We also incorporated adaptive triggers into the L2 and R2 buttons of DualSense so you can truly feel the tension of your actions, like when drawing a bow to shoot an arrow.

If you want to know more about haptic feedback then click here. We’ve also discussed the new ‘Create’ button which replaces the Share button found on the current Dualshock, you can read about that here.

Backwards Compatibility

Sony have confirmed that the “overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles” will play on the PlayStation 5, although some of them may need to be patched by the creators. Here’s more from Sony:

With all of the amazing games in PS4’s catalog, we’ve devoted significant efforts to enable our fans to play their favorites on PS5. We believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5.

We’re expecting backward compatible titles will run at a boosted frequency on PS5 so that they can benefit from higher or more stable frame rates and potentially higher resolutions.

“Whether it’s backwards compatibility or the possibility of cross-generational play, we’ll be able to transition that community to next-gen,” SIE president Jim Ryan told CNET. “It won’t be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship.”

Sony have also mandated that all PS4 games published after 13th July must run on PlayStation 5. It’s unlikely PlayStation 1,2 or 3 games will run natively on the console, since Sony has the PlayStation Now streaming service for those.

Will it use “the cloud”?

Microsoft’s big buzz word during the Xbox One launch barely gets a mention these days but the PlayStation 5 will feature it in some form other another. “We are cloud-gaming pioneers,” Mark Cerny told Wired. “Our vision should become clear as we head toward launch.”

PlayStation VR support

The current PlayStation VR headset will be supported by PlayStation 5 but patents for a new version with finger tracking have been filed, so we may see PSVR 2 after the console launches. I won’t go into the details of our VR strategy,” states Mark Cerny, “beyond saying that VR is very important to us and that the current PSVR headset is compatible with the new console.”

Next-Gen Games

Listed below are all the confirmed games for the console, and by that we mean it has been explicitly stated they are coming to PS5. The developers of other games, such as Cyberpunk 2077, have said they would be looking at PS5 versions but nothing has been confirmed.

Sony have said that unlike Xbox Series X the company’s first party games will be exclusive to the console. Gran Turismo 7 was leaked and quickly denied with a very flimsy excuse, and there have been many indications that Horizon Zero Dawn 2 is also on the way.

Here’s what’s been confirmed so far: