Playstation 5

Ray tracing might be nice but fixing the load times is a huge deal. That's one giant leap towards competing with the PC master race.

 

Yeah an SSD is one of the biggest upgrades for any modern computing device. They make everything so much faster. Consoles finally getting solid state storage is a huge deal.

 

I'm getting the impression that the audio will be getting a huge upgrade over PS4. Sony rarely even brought up the audio capabilities of the PS3 despite being far more advanced than expected for its time with 7.1 lossless audio. Naughty Dog's PS3 games had some of the best audio I'd ever heard up to that point. PS4 wasn't much of an advancement over the PS3 in the sound department. However, Cerny is specifically bringing up significant 3D audio advancements in PS5 via an advanced audio processor on the AMD chip and even brought up using ray tracing for more advanced audio.

A Digital Foundry video that discussed the backwards compatibility with PS4 really got me thinking about what they could do with games like Horizon. With a patch, it could be possible to run games we already own at native 4K and 60 fps. Even on just the Pro some of those games look incredible on an OLED with techniques like checkerboard rendering or temporal injection. I'm expecting the PS5 to be around twice as powerful as the Pro in terms of raw power along with one of the biggest CPU upgrades we've seen between console generations in quite some time. The SSD sounds very advanced, too. I think the Wired article claimed a load time went from 15 seconds to 0.8 seconds.

I'm starting to get concerned about the price given what they plan to stuff into this thing. Seems like what they're describing is +$500 minimum. More like $600 or more. I can't see them doing that, but I'm not sure how they can release it at a reasonable price. They didn't even include a 4K Blu-ray drive in the PS4 or Pro.

 

This could be another expensive gen like PS3/X360. Those consoles were also a massive leap in technology. People also had sticker shock, especially at the $600 price of the PS3, but ultimately the tech it brought to the table (multi-core CPU, discrete GPU, BR drive) proved to be important over the course of the gen.

 

I was thinking it might very expensive as well. Ryzen 2 ~$150, Navi ~$200, and an SSD $150. < $500 might be difficult. I bet this gets released at $700 with 1 AAA game. I also predict this could be the last PS ever made.

 

I'd definitely be on board for more power at a higher price personally, but over $400 isn't usually well received by the masses. It seems like going with a simpler, less cutting edge design worked out fairly well for Sony with PS4. Cerny's description of what they have planned sounds more like their approach with PS3 than PS4. I thought they'd take a somewhat similar approach that they did with PS4 but perhaps reduce the life cycle slightly to account for becoming antiquated faster. I thought they'd release a PS5, release an upgraded version a few years later, then move onto the PS6 earlier than they had in the past. That doesn't seem to be the case from what they're saying now.

 

@bfun

Why do you think it will be the last playstation?

 

I think game streaming might actually be a feasible replacement in 7 years.

 

It may one day be feasible but I wonder how soon that would be. Basically everyone would need very low latency high bandwidth connections. OnLive experimented with this idea a few years ago, but it was clear that connections were not ready. Even some urban and suburban areas in the US have crappy internet access, and rural areas are totally screwed for this kind of thing.

 

Google is starting their service this year so I think we'll get a good idea of how well it will work pretty soon.