- Sony’s big PS5 announcement turned out to be a boring affair for the hundreds of thousands of fans who flocked to YouTube in hope of seeing the console for the first time.
- The PlayStation 5 announcements seemed to target developers more than gamers who are looking to buy the console, as Sony didn’t reveal anything juicy about the device.
- The PS5 specs will match the Xbox Series X for the most part, and the tech Sony developed for the console is fascinating, if you’re into that. Otherwise, you’re back to waiting for an actual PS5 reveal and there’s no telling when that might happen.
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You only needed a few minutes of watching Sony’s big PlayStation 5 event on Wednesday to realize that Sony was about to ruin its huge PS5 reveal for all its gamers. Don’t get me wrong, Sony’s revelations about the various technologies that go into the development of the PS5 are certainly interesting. But what Sony’s lead PS5 system architect Mark Cerny gave a presentation that can only cater to a particular type of audience: developers. Sony’s PS5 announcement would have been fine had Sony wanted to reach the boredom levels that Google and Microsoft aim for with certain sections of their I/O and Build events. Then again, those events also contain plenty of announcements for consumers, not just for the developers in the audience who will use those software innovations to provide new experiences for those Google and Microsoft devices. Sony’s event on Wednesday was even more annoying than that, as the entire PS5 presentation felt like an internal presentation for game developers. That’s because it was the GDC keynote Sony had planned but never got the chance to host because the coronavirus pandemic caused the event to be canceled.
Sony fans in the audience did not expect that, however. If you followed the pre-recorded event live of YouTube, you’ve probably noticed that more than 600,000 fans sat through it. You’ve probably seen the comments section too, rolling up in real-time and asking for Sony to actually reveal PS5 details that matter to gamers. And you’ve probably noticed the massive amount of hate the clip got — the video had over 25,000 dislikes when Cerny finished the keynote, and that number went up to 55,000 as of the time of this writing.
Cerny took his time to explain in great detail the various tech advancements that will turn the PS5 into an absolute beast of a console. The new PlayStation will have almost the same set of specs as the Xbox Series X with a few significant differences. But that’s all that Sony revealed during the presentation, focusing on how the PS5 hardware will improve gameplay, whether its the ultra-fast SSD, the expandable storage, the GPU, the new cooling system, or the 3D sound. At times, the presentation felt like an excuse from Sony as to why the PS5’s specs won’t perfectly match the Xbox Series X. Microsoft’s next-gen console has a faster CPU and better GPU performance, though PS5’s SSD supports twice the speed of the new Xbox. As for storage, Sony is going with an 825GB SSD for the PS5 instead of the expected 1TB of storage that would match the Series X.
Sony did not show the PS5 design, even though it talked at length about the console’s cooling system. Considering that Microsoft unveiled the Series X design in mid-December and then followed up with full specs and a teardown earlier this week, revealing the final PlayStation 5 design is the least Sony could have done for future buyers. We don’t even know what sort of connectivity the console will support, although Sony did confirm it will have an NVMe SSD slot that will support storage upgrades in the future, as long as the M2 drives you plan on buying can support the same high-end speeds as the built-in storage and are small enough to fit inside the slot.
Sony didn’t show or talk about the new DualShock controller either. The company soft-launched it back in October, stopping short from revealing its name or design. We expect it to be called DualShock 5 and feature a similar design to its predecessor but with a few new tricks like a microphone for voice commands.
The company didn’t even reveal any of the console’s features unless they were directly related to the hardware. For example, Sony addressed backward compatibility only to confirm that the PS5 hardware will support PS4 Pro and PS4 games. Several rumors said that PS1, PS2, and PS3 games will also run on the new hardware, but Cerny gave no hint that will be the case.
And don’t even ask about pricing or release date information! That’s the sort of announcement that will come sometime later this year. Not even Microsoft was ready to reveal those details despite already having revealed the Xbox Series X’s specs, design, controller, and new features.
