“Not evolution, but revolution”: Sony’s leading architect spoke about the PlayStation of the new generation

These and other details about the future platform were revealed by its system architect Mark Cerny in an interview for Wired. He described the device of the console, which is called PlayStation 5 in the media (it does not have an official name yet), and also demonstrated its approximate capabilities to journalists. To do this, he used a low-speed devkit, which means that the new product may be much more powerful on release.

What will the new Sony console be like?

• The future console will be backward compatible with PS4.
• The novelty will support 8K resolution.
• The console is equipped with an SSD hard drive, and this, according to Serni, is the main advantage of the novelty, literally “the key to the next generation”. Its net throughput is already higher than that of any SSD available for PC. The loading time of game locations on the console will decrease significantly.
• As an example, Cerny demonstrated Marvel’s Spider-Man. The game developers have given Spider-Man a certain speed of movement so that the PS4 has time to load the world. But, since the new PS device loads locations very quickly, Spider-Man can move much faster on it.
• Its CPU belongs to the third generation AMD Ryzen. It is equipped with eight cores with a new microarchitecture of Zen 2 computing cores, made according to the technical norm of 7 nm.
• The graphics processor of the Raden Navi family supports ray tracing. The new PS may become the first home console with support for this option, which is often used when creating Hollywood special effects.
• The dedicated AMD sound chip will allow you to achieve truly surround sound. The sounds will reach the player from above, behind and from the side.
• The sound effects described above will not require separate external audio equipment. The speakers of a regular TV will be enough.
• The difference in sound quality between the PS4 and the new PS will be much more noticeable than between the PS3 and PS4, says Cerny.
• Sony is making a big bet on VR. And although Cerny did not go into details here, he noted that the current PlayStation VR will be compatible with the new PS.
• According to Serni, it will be possible to launch games from physical media on the new console.
• Probably, some future game releases are intended for both PS4 and nextgen consoles. We are talking at least about Death Stranding, the publication suggests.

We add that all the information received from Serni was not officially confirmed by Sony. The output characteristics of the console may be different.

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