Sony’s PlayStation 5 segment during its CES 2020 press conference was underwhelming, to say the least. All the company did was show us the PS5 logo we were expecting anyway, and then recap all the PlayStation 5 announcements it had already made in previous months. Sony did say later that its biggest PS5 features hadn’t yet been announced, so we knew there were still some surprises in store. At the time, we told you that some of those surprises had already appeared in rumors, like the PlayStation virtual assistant and backward compatibility support for previous PlayStation consoles. But it turns out there may be even more exciting PS5 features that hadn’t yet been discovered, and the latest major leak may shed light on at least a few of them.
PS5 price and specs
Posted on 4chan earlier this week, the leak reads a lot like a similar rumor from a few weeks ago, the one that told us the console would be unveiled on February 5th, and that it’ll cost $499 when t launches in October. Interestingly enough, the new report mentions the exact same details, giving us our first reason to question the rumor. It seems highly unlikely for Sony to hold a PlayStation 5 event on February 5th to unveil “the system, controller, and key aspects of their plan,” given that the date is next week and Sony hasn’t issued press invites for any event.
That said, the leaker provided plenty of extra details about the PS5 compared to the previous report. According to this person, Sony is set to hold a second event close to E3 2020, and then a final event before the console’s launch to provide the last remaining details about the console. On top of that, there should be up to three State of Play events throughout the year to keep the buzz going.
The report notes that the PS5’s price is set in stone at $500. However, and this is an exciting tidbit, Sony is trying to go for a 2TB SSD, which would be amazing news for gamers. Sony’s PS5 SSD is already rumored to be faster than the Xbox Series X’s drive, and we’d expect the console to feature at least 1TB of storage. A leak recently suggested that the PS5 dev kit comes with 1TB of flash memory onboard.
This new leaker also says that Sony has a slight edge over Microsoft when it comes to SSD tech, but that the Xbox Series X will also cost $500.
New cloud features
The leaker also shared some details about PS5 functionality that hasn’t been detailed before. Gamers will be able to play multiple games at the same time and have up to three games suspended while playing a fourth game. The console will apparently also run different instances of the same game at the same time. Moreover, the cloud will support “as many games suspended as you like,” and will let you resume a game on the console (or stream it to other platforms) even after months of playing other games.
Similarly, save data, screenshots, and video clips can be sent to the cloud to free up local storage. On top of that, the console will provide “rigorous amounts of data and statistics” about the games you play. If that sounds familiar, it’s because we saw this feature mentioned a few months ago when the first patents detailing Sony’s gaming-centric virtual assistant were discovered.
Backward compatibility
The leaker touched on backward compatibility, claiming that it’ll be a huge deal for the console. The PS5 will be able to play all the existing PS4 titles, and Sony is working on adding support for as many old games as possible, going back as far as the PS1. Even compatibility with PSP and Vita games is supposedly in the works:
Expect PlayStation 1, 2, 3 and 4 games available to purchase and play on PS5 at launch. The full PS4 catalogue will be available, but libraries will be limited for other platforms to begin with. More games will be added as time goes on in much the same way Microsoft did. You will actually see a lot more old games supporting high frame rates, 4K resolution and HDR (even ray tracing) on PS5 than has been possible on Xbox One. Sony are very much concerned about saving old games from older platforms. They have the first Gran Turismo game running on PlayStation 5 at 120fps with ray tracing enabled. It looks surprisingly great for a 22-year-old game. Backward compatibility for PSP and Vita are also in development with Sony aiming to have both available within 2 years of the system launching.
PS5 vs. Xbox
The report also says that Sony and Microsoft aren’t looking to undercut each other on price. “Both [consoles] cost very similarly to produce, are almost indistinguishable in terms of specs and can’t afford to launch at any less than $500,” the leaker said. But what they’re fighting for are exclusive games:
Sony and Microsoft are currently both in a business war with one another to secure marketing rights to certain third-party titles that are going to be considered major draws to the next generation. Interestingly enough Microsoft has already gotten the marketing for Rocksteady’s new title, but the WB Games Montreal title heavily rumored to be called Batman: Arkham Legacy (not sure about the name) is up for the taking and is said to be an exceedingly and surprisingly impressive game. Right now the developers are having issues porting the game to current generation hardware. Also in contention is 2 different projects from EA Motive, a 4th Mafia game from 2K, an exciting New IP from Sega and Creative Assembly and Ubisoft’s Avatar.
Finally, the last tidbit of information in this huge leak concerns the Xbox Lockhart, which is the codename for the cheaper Xbox Series X that we expect Microsoft to release. Apparently, the console is in development but it might not be ready in time for a fall release.
