After a period of silence from Sony regarding any news on the PS5, we now have some new details revealed by Sony themselves about the specs of the upcoming system, only referred to as “The next generation console.” These details were released earlier this week by the PS5’s lead console architect, Mark Cerny.

The first of the details announced, which is the biggest and arguably the best feature for some fans, is that the new console will be backward compatible. This is great news for most gamers, as the PS3 and PS4 are not backward compatible, to much dismay of players. However, now that Sony is including the feature, it should be well received and be a good selling point. We might also see some PS4 titles become multi-platform games. For example, Death Stranding coming out on the PS4, and then the PS5 later on.

Many have speculated the PS5 might be similar to Google Stadia in regards to being an online streaming-only service/console but to the relief of fans, myself included, Cerny has confirmed the PS5 has a disc drive. However, that won’t stop Sony from supporting cloud-based gaming either, as they most likely will continue to support the PS Now service. Relating to that topic Cerny said, “We are cloud-gaming pioneers, and our vision should become clear as we head toward launch.” So that probably means they might keep supporting the PS Now into the next generation as well.

In the hardware department, the PS5 is much more powerful; featuring a Solid State Drive (SSD) this time, something the PS4 does not have. This will significantly improve the speed of load times and rendering of the PS5. As proof of this, Cerny showcased a part of Marvel’s Spiderman PS4 on a developer kit for the PS5, where the game and its world loaded in less than a second due to the increased power of the hardware.

It will also have a third generation AMD Ryzen chipset graphic card, containing eight cores of the seven-nanometer Zen 2 microchip. This basically means it will enable an 8K Resolution, which will also be compatible with the PSVR. The console will be capable of supporting ray tracing, a complex yet beautiful lighting technique that is usually only seen in high-end PCs. Additionally, the PS5 will also boast “gold standard” 3D improved audio, that is much better than its predecessors which Cerny says is quite important for immersion.

Cerny did not give any details on the software aspects or any of the new services it might offer. So far it seems Sony is only interested in showcasing the hardware of the console. All we can do now is wait for a full reveal.

Although Sony announced they weren’t going to be at E3 this year, one can only assume they are going to be revealing further details at a PlayStation event, such as the PlayStation Experience, or during its next State of Play Livestream. There’s also no official release date yet. Cerny would only tell Wired that it won’t be out in 2019, but that developers already have access to devkits to their develop games; which means it might be released sooner than we think.

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