Marvel's Spider-Man, released September 2018, was made exclusive to the PlayStation 4. — AFP Relaxnews
The PlayStation 5 hasn't been announced or even officially named, but investors in parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment have seen how much faster it is than the company's current console. Thanks to a reporter's video of the event, now we can see too.
Back in March, PlayStation's lead console architect had spoken about the vast loading time improvements offered by the PlayStation 4's successor.
Using a PlayStation 4 Pro playing 2018's Spider-Man game and a next-generation PlayStation console development kit, he showed Wired Magazine how the new system's loading speed was radically faster.
Another demonstration showed how a fly-through of the game's city compared on the two machines, with the PS4 version limited to Spider-Man's normal web-slinging speed but the PS5 kit's camera rushing through "like it's mounted to a fighter jet".
Those two demonstrations, or a variation thereof, featured during Sony's May 20 presentation, as captured by Takashi Mochizuki, one of the journalists present.
A first comparison showed a next-gen dev kit loading a Spider-Man environment in 0.8 seconds, while a standard PS4 Pro took eight seconds for the same task.
The second comparison was a city fly-through, this time to show the PS4 Pro failing to keep up with the next-gen kit's velocity.
Slides from the same presentation segment summarised Sony's position to date: the next console will have an all new central and graphics chips, a solid-state drive (part of what enables such swift loading times), and backwards compatibility with the PlayStation 4.
The console will also support ray tracing technology, 8K resolution, and 3D audio.
Even though digital downloading is widely accepted, the next PlayStation will also provide support for Blu-ray data discs.
As well as disc and downloads, online cloud gaming is also expected to become a standardised option for game distribution, a later slide explained.
Sony also acknowledged five unknowns that it has not yet chosen to disclose (besides the name): date, price, games, user experience and country rollout.
That's not to say the PlayStation 4 is being retired anytime soon.
As well as providing a community of early adopters for the new machine, Sony's current home console is central to engagement and profitability "for the next three years", while high-profile exclusives The Last Of Us Part II, Death Stranding and Ghost Of Tsushima are still on their way.
The drip-feed of PlayStation information comes as Xbox is expected to tease its own next-gen console at a June 9 briefing ahead of the 2019 Electronic Entertainment Expo. – AFP Relaxnews
