In a past interview with Wired, Sony lead architect Mark Cerny has stated new details regarding the PS5, the most notable of which is that there is no way it will be announced or released this year. A new report, however, now states that the PlayStation 5 also won’t be making an appearance within the next 12 months. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal took to Twitter to break the news, essentially saying that Sony is telling various reporters during Q&A sessions that we will not be seeing the next-gen console sometime within the year.
Sony:
— Takashi Mochizuki (@6d6f636869) April 26, 2019
-No next-gen PlayStation launch over next 12 months
-PS Now has been ave. 40% annual growth since launch, now 700,000 users
-Much of Y31.1 billion (difference between past fy op vs this fy op outlook) to be invested to develop next PlayStation console
This could, however, narrow down three possible release dates for the PlayStation 5: a summer launch date which can coincide with E3, should Sony decide to attend the event again; fall 2020, which is likely considering an announcement could be made in advance during E3; or maybe even a holiday launch, which is when consoles are mostly available in stores.
Mark Cerny’s interview with Wired did state some of the capabilities we can expect in the next-gen console. Sony is promising 8K graphics support, 3D audio, an SSD storage (finally), and backward compatibility with PlayStation 4 titles. The last feature left some to speculate that we might see cross-generational games next year rather than PlayStation 5 only exclusives.
The PlayStation 5 is also set to include two of AMD’s newest tech: a third-gen eight core Ryzen CPU, based on the yet-to-be-released Zen 2 7nm platform, and a Radeon Navi GPU, also based on the 7nm platform. Cerny went on to state that the PlayStation 5 will offer some sort of ray-tracing, which could be a gamechanger if true; as of now, the only way to get reliable frames in ray-traced games are with Nvidia RTX cards, which can cost upwards of $700.
While Microsoft has been notably silent with regards to its next-gen offerings, some insiders have spoken out that the newest Xbox will still be more powerful than the PlayStation 5, although no such hardware specs have been provided. Still, Microsoft has an E3 presence this year while Sony does not, which could mean that they will be preparing something big for this event.
Whatever the case may be though, this is shaping up to be quite a next-gen scuffle, and an all-new console war is brewing on the horizon.
