Sony Confirms PlayStation 5 Release Date, New Controller Features, and More

Sony announced the release date for its next generation PlayStation console today in a press release.

“I’m proud to share that our next-generation console will be called PlayStation 5, and we’ll be launching in time for Holiday 2020,” Jim Ryan, President and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said in the release.

We still don’t know much about the PlayStation 5 beyond the fact that it exists and it’s coming out next year. Wired, which previously broke the story of the console’s existence, got an exclusive look at the console. The new PlayStation will not only be a graphical upgrade but also a rethinking of certain aspects of a console.

For starters, Sony is changing how the PS5 will handle storage. The new solid-state drive will not only make games boot up faster and reduce loading times, but it will come with a new way of handling games installation. Users will be able to install just a game’s multiplayer or single-player campaign instead of installing the whole game.

“Rather than treating games like a big block of data,” system architect Mark Cerny told Wired, “we’re allowing finer-grained access to the data.”

Cerny also said that ray-tracing will be supported at the hardware, not software level. “There is ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware,” he said.

Additionally, he confirmed that the PS5 will, indeed, sport a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray deck. And while he fell short of admitting that the next DualShock controller will support voice control (as suggested by a filed patent), he did admit that it will add “adaptive triggers” featuring with increased tension depending on the game played. There will also be haptic feedback and an improved speaker on the pad.

Sony also confirmed that PS5 dev kits are in the hands of developers who are working on new games for the console’s release.

Back in September, the PlayStation maker said the new console will be “greener.” If one million users make use of the PS5’s energy-saving feature, Sony said, that would save the equivalent of the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes.