The next console generation is officially in the near future, now that both Sony and Microsoft have started to lift the lid on their upcoming platforms. Microsoft officially introduced the next Xbox as Project Scarlett during its E3 2019 press briefing with a video of developers and executives discussing the console’s features and how they’ll empower game makers. Sony pulled out of E3 this year, but the company revealed the first information about the next PlayStation — which is unofficially known as the PlayStation 5 — in April.
Details remain scarce at this point for both Scarlett and the PS5, but would-be early adopters are already hungry to learn more. Here’s everything we know about the PS5. What is the PS5’s release date? Sony hasn’t explicitly provided a launch window for the next PlayStation, let alone a date. But we do have an idea of when it could arrive. In late April, Sony executives said that the company would not release the PS5 for at least 12 months. That puts the earliest launch timing in the summer of 2020. Considering that Sony hasn’t said much else about the system since then — and hasn’t confirmed any games in development for it — it’s hard to imagine the console would be ready to launch a year from now. In other words, the smart money is on a fall 2020 debut, which would put the PS5 alongside Scarlett (just like the PS4 and Xbox One, which launched one week apart in November 2013). What are the PS5’s hardware specifications? Sony hasn’t yet provided hardware specifications for the console. What we know right now is that like Scarlett, the PS5 will be powered by technology from AMD. The eight-core CPU will be based on AMD’s third-generation Ryzen processors and its new 7 nm Zen 2 architecture, while the GPU will be a custom design from the company’s upcoming Navi line of graphics cards.
The GPU will support real-time ray tracing, a cutting-edge rendering technique that debuted in consumer-level graphics cards from AMD competitor Nvidia in 2018. But right now, Sony has not confirmed whether the PS5’s GPU will offer hardware-based ray tracing features. The company is currently promising that the console will also support resolutions of up to 8K and frame rates up to 120 Hz. On the nonvisual front, the PS5 will contain a custom chip for 3D audio, which will allow the console to deliver more immersive surround sound à la Dolby Atmos and DTS:X. It will still offer an optical drive for disc-based games. And Sony is touting a surprising component as the PS5’s biggest upgrade over current-generation consoles: a solid-state drive (instead of a hard drive) that’s designed specifically for gaming, which will greatly reduce load times and empower developers to create larger and more complex game worlds. Will the PS5 be backward-compatible with PS4 games? Yes. The PS5’s architecture is based partly on that of the PS4. So unlike with the leap from the PlayStation 3 to the
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