The Playstation 5 dev kit may have been revealed as pictures of a patent filed by Sony have recently surfaced online. Sony has had an incredible showing throughout this entire console generation, with new figures affirming that they have shipped 100 million Playstation 4 consoles. Yesterday, it was announced that Sony purchased Spider-Man PS4 developer, Insomniac Games.
However, it hasn't been all good news for Sony. Earlier this month, it was revealed that games developed by Quantic Dreams would not be exclusive to Playstation from now on. Additionally, the PlayStation Classic, Sony's answer to the Nintendo Classic and SNES Classic, has reportedly been selling poorly. The Playstation Classic has had to discount its price to a fraction of what it was originally sold at.
According to VG24/7, pictures of a patent leaked online may show what the PS5 dev kit looks like. Let's Go Digital originally found the patent, and people have been speculating since the pictures popped up on Twitter. No one can say for sure that the patent is for the PS5 dev kit since it was listed by Sony Interactive Entertainment as an unknown device, but it definitely looks interesting.
Dev kits rarely look like the console that the finished games will end up on. They are often bigger and bulkier, with many more moving parts for developers to tool around with. There are also usually different outlets that allow dev kits to be plugged in directly to high-powered computers. This picture shows a disc drive and what appear to be several USB outlets in the front. The giant V in the middle of the console could be the console's exhaust system. Dev kits have be able to handle a lot more power than their console counterparts, so it would make sense to have an exhaust this large.
Even though dev kits usually look very different than consoles, it may give us an idea of what to expect. The PS5 will certainly be smaller than what it is pictured in the patent, but the shape may be similar. Of course, this may not be a dev kit at all. It could be an idea for the next iteration of PSVR or it may be related to something that has nothing to do with video games. Some patents are difficult to decipher, while others are very clear in what they are trying to achieve, like the Xbox Cloud Controller patent. Regardless of where this design ends up, it's always interesting to see what these companies are trying to come up with.
Source: Let's Go Digital (via VG24/7)