“We will leverage backwards compatibility to transition our community to next-gen faster and more seamlessly than ever before,” the company’s presentation said at the event. Sony intends to use PS4 games to encourage early adopters, which it says are critical for the PS5’s success. In fact, it promises more AAA games for the PlayStation 4, seeing as it will remain an “engine of engagement and profitability” over the next three years. This may hint at Sony pricing the PS5 at a loss, and relying on the PS4 to keep the gaming division in the black.
Even though the upcoming console will have similarities with the PS4, it will be powered by an all-new CPU and GPU. In an interview with Wired, lead system architect Mark Cerny said it will use a third-gen AMD Ryzen CPU with eight cores and a custom GPU built on AMD’s Radeon Navi family. The GPU will support an advanced rendering technique called ray tracing, which is limited to high-end gaming PCs at the moment, and will provide the console with immersive 3D audio.
In addition, the PS5 will use SSDs for storage instead of hard drives. The SSD, along with its other components, lead to a significant speed bump: at the event, Sony showed how the PS5 is around ten times faster than the PS4 Pro when it comes to loading complex scenes.
The upcoming console will also support 8K graphics to be able to make the most out of all the 8K TVs making their way to the market, although don’t hold you breath for any native 8K games given that’s essentially beyond even the most powerful gaming PC. And perhaps…