HAVING FINALLY DEBUTED THE SPECS OF ITS LATEST MASTERPIECE GAMING CONSOLE, SONY INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT ASKS US ONLY ONE QUESTION REGARDING THE UPCOMING PLAYSTATION 5. IS IT THE FUTURE OF GAMING? WE’LL LET YOU BE THE JUDGE…

BY MATT MIZRACH

Since its official announcement back in April of ‘19 by Mark Cerny (lead architect of Sony Interactive Entertainment), the PlayStation 5 has been a source of mystery and wonder for anyone paying attention. From hardcore gamers and fans to rival companies like Microsoft and Nintendo, many have had important (and at times dubious) questions for the gaming company, whose current flagship PS4 represents a whopping 65% of the global market share. Sony offered such a meager trail of breadcrumbs across the months that followed, small nuggets like completely redesigned hardware, “adaptive triggers” with haptic feedback, and so on, but nothing we aficionados could really sink our teeth into.

That is until the evening of June 11, when in true Jobsian fashion, Sony streamed a 75-minute showcase that nearly broke the internet and had console hashtags flooding social media feeds for days. The Sony development team highlighted all of the cutting-edge leaps forward taken by this incredible device, demonstrated live via screenings of some of the most anticipated game releases – Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Hitman 3, Grand Theft Auto V, NBA 2K21, Resident Evil 8, and even Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, to name a few.

They looked, in a word, legendary.

As for the specs, the completely redesigned console is sporty and futuristic, borrowing design elements from movies like Ready Player One by opting to go with a simple white on black color scheme along with a cool blue glow. Under the hood, the console boasts an incredibly high octane CPU and GPU as well as a lightning fast SSD with integrated I/O that allows for “near instant” load times. Advances in techniques like ray tracing make for even more realistic gaming worlds to immerse yourself in; 4K gaming is available, and the device even has the ability for 8k output in conjunction with a 4320p resolution display. Of course, the controllers were rebuilt from the ground up, with the aforementioned adaptive triggers that offer the natural resistance of shooting a weapon (a bow, for example) as well as DualSense haptic feedback, which makes you feel every bump, scrape, scratch, and so much more. The list goes on and, quite frankly, there are too many upgrades to count.

While the official price tag on the future of gaming has yet to be announced, field consensus shows that base models will start north of $500. Its release will be sometime around the coming holiday season – just in time for the spirit of giving!

PlayStation 5
playstation.com