Sony has finally unveiled the technology behind the upcoming PlayStation 5 with a demonstration of the incredible load times that the system is capable of.
The PlayStation 5 has been in development for a long time and rumors of its specifications have slowly leaked out, with patent documents hinting at backward compatibility, the CEO of AMD talking about how impressive its hardware is going to be, official statements made by the company about how the system will make load times a thing of the past, and a shocking partnership with Microsoft regarding future endeavors in streaming. A lot has been said about the PlayStation 5 without any concrete details being given and Sony's absence from E3 2019 means that the most obvious platform for an announcement is not being used.
Sony has finally revealed information about the PlayStation 5 during a recent investor meeting, which has been detailed in a PDF on the company's Investor Relations website. A video of the event has been shared to Twitter by Takashi Mochizuki of The Wall Street Journal, which shows the prowess of the PlayStation 5's loading capabilities. The video shows a level being loaded in Spider-Man on both the PlayStation 4 Pro and on the PlayStation 5, which was referred to as "Next Generation" in the demonstration. The level took around eight seconds to load on the PlayStation 4 Pro, while it took less than a second on the PlayStation 5.
The PlayStation 5 was also discussed during the meeting and the information was recorded in the IR Day 2019 document. The document confirms that backward compatibility will be included in the PlayStation 5 in order to seamlessly transition the fans from one generation to the next and that Sony intends to provide a stable environment for developers. The PlayStation 5 is confirmed to contain an all-new CPU, GPU, and SSD, it will still support the use of discs, and it will be capable of performing ray tracing with its graphics hardware, and it will support 8k televisions and 3D audio technology. Sony also made a point of mentioning the things that they have yet to comment on, which includes the price of the system, the games that will appear on it, the countries that it will be sold in, and its release date.
The PlayStation 4 is not ready for the grave just yet, as Sony confirmed the system will still see support for the next three years. Sony also discussed the importance of streaming to their future plans, with it being placed alongside disc-based media and digital downloads in terms of their business model for the PlayStation 5.
The demonstration of the PlayStation 5's hardware was impressive and it offers a tangible glimpse at what the system will be capable of. Spider-Man is a gorgeous looking game from the current generation of consoles and the PlayStation 5 was able to load it within the space of a second. The question we are left with now is how the games that are designed to run on the PlayStation 5 will perform.
Source: Sony, Takashi Mochizuki/Twitter