Gaming
Games
Sony say the PlayStation 5 is coming, but when?
Enough has been said about the next-generation to suggest it’s on the way, but when, why, and how? We investigate.
Sony’s PS4 has been an unequivocal success. The console gaming giant launched their latest console in November 2013 a staggering 76 million units have been sold worldwide, with that figure split between the original model and the more powerful Pro model which launched three years later, in November 2016. To put that into perspective, the PlayStation 3 sold over 80 million consoles since its 2006 launch.
But it’s not all good news because five years in, sales are slowing, with an expected 2019 forecast of 16 million PS4s to be sold a stark contrast to the 20 million from the previous year. According to head of PlayStation, John Kodera, the console is entering its final phase and that can only suggest one thing: the PS5 is coming.
Crouch down, jump higher
Kodera has given the biggest hint yet that the PS5 isn’t as far away as people previously thought. “We will use the next three years to prepare the next step, to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future”, he said. But what does that mean? Simply put, the PS4 life cycle can be split into three categories: the launch, the middle, and the end. The launch is obvious: the console comes out, sells by the bucketload, with games that showcase the new power on offer. The middle is when it hits its stride, with games truly showing off visuals that would be impossible in years gone by, and sales that break records - as Sony have done. The end, in this case, is Sony entering the research and development phase, working out what the next move is, and, yes, crouching down, in order to jump higher.
Crouching down means slowing production on the console, allowing money to be made on the services (PlayStation Plus, etc) and the software (the games). Making a new console costs a lot of money, whoever you are, and that cost is offset by having a huge audience that’s happy to keep subscribing to PlayStation Plus, and wants to play The Last of Us: Part II, Days Gone, and whatever new titles are yet to come in the final years. The company is hunkering down to create the PS5, and the jumping higher is about going beyond what we’ve seen before.
What’s in a name?
The obvious choice for the next-generation for Sony is to go with the PS5, but the water has been muddied a little by the fact that how console generations work has changed. We no longer go from generation to generation and have for the first time had a half-step in the form of the PS4 Pro and, of course, the Xbox One X. While Microsoft might have a tougher time naming whatever they do next, Sony will, surely, keep with their naming convention and call it the PlayStation 5, or, perhaps go the Apple route and just call it the PlayStation.
But the Pro has thrown a spanner in the works for a number of reasons. Firstly because it makes you wonder if Sony would alter naming conventions further, but more importantly because it has changed expectations of what a 'new' console even means. The upgrade to 4K brings new obstacles and poses the question of what the PS5 has to be.
4K, 60fps, and more
For starters, there’s absolutely no chance that the PS5 won’t target native 4K at 60fps. It simply has to. We’re at the stage where games like God of War look simply incredible, which makes people who’ve recently dropped significant cash on a PS4 Pro ask themselves why they’d buy a new console: what can a PS5 do that the PS4 can’t? But the Pro is about options. Few games that look as good as God of War can do 4K and 60fps, it’s about choosing resolution or performance. A new console generation simply must do both to justify existing.
Right now, that kind of graphical fidelity and power isn’t cheap to come by. Getting 4K/60fps on a PC isn’t cheap, or easy to do, thanks mostly due to the Bitcoin explosion which has seen graphics cards harder to come by for a reasonable cost. It’s a simple case of supply and demand: if people are buying all the graphics cards, it’s going to cost more to fit them into a new console.
Moreover, NVIDIA are set to announce the latest in their series of cards, the 11-series. The PS4 is, of course, a custom-built device, not simply using off-the-shelf tech, but it’s going to have to have a lot of grunt to make it do the things a next-generational step has to do. Sony are apparently working with AMD’s Ryzen Navi tech which supposedly offers the equivalent of a GTX 1080 at a far more affordable price.
How soon can we expect to see the PS5?
The likely reveal of the console is, at the very earliest, E3 2019, but we’re actually thinking a 2020 reveal, with a holiday 2021 release date. The PS4 Pro is shining and making games sing, but the console is also only just starting to slow in terms of sales. Sony wouldn’t launch too early, killing goodwill and a phenomenally successful console for no good reason.
We’d bet on a God of War sequel being on PS5, along with Death Stranding and Final Fantasy 7 Remake – maybe even CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 – which could well be the kind of game that hits both PS4 and PS5. Beyond that, Sony has a rich library with which to launch the console, but that all takes time. Rumours of dev-kits being in the hands of publishers and developers are almost definitely false, too: it’s too early.
One thing’s for sure: the PS3 generation was an anomaly. A ten-year life cycle isn’t standard, but the Xbox 360 dominated the era, ushering in online gaming in a way nobody knew they even wanted, with the PS3 making a late claim thanks to incredible experiences like the Uncharted series. Before that, consoles would regularly shift generation around the six- to seven-year mark, and all signs look set for that model to come back. Whether people are ready for a new console or not is another thing, but we’re looking forward to playing all those incredible games in an even higher resolution, with better performance, and hopefully some genius new gameplay ideas. Roll on 2021 (we hope).
