Since the beginning of 2020, the rumor mill has been churning for Sony's official announcement of the next PlayStation console, the PlayStation 5. With Microsoft already ahead with the reveal of the Xbox Series X, all eyes are on Sony to officially unveil its next console.
Hopefully looking to replicate its success in the next console generation, Sony has a lot of expectations to live up to if it wants to keep up its lead. With Xbox announcing the Series X line of new consoles at The Game Awards last year, fans have been patiently waiting for Sony's response, and while it has been very quiet up until this point, discussion and speculation has begun to swirl on the little tidbits of info and rumors revealed so far on the PlayStation 5.
Sony put up the official PlayStation 5 website earlier this week, but with a simple message and no other additional information. There's a newsletter form to fill out asking players to sign up for updates and that more information would be coming soon, but that's about it. That being said, these kinds of releases don't happen that far in advance, so it's possible there's an unveiling event coming within the month.
Many are pointing to the "private event" that was booked at the end of February at the Sony Hall in New York as the date for the official console reveal, but as of right now, that's just conjecture. Leakers are also stating that the PS5 reveal may not even be in February period. Should there be a reveal in February or in the near future for the PlayStation 5, here's what to expect from the announcement in light of the current on-goings.
Viewers are likely to receive a mission statement from Mark Cerny and Jim Ryan, detailing the goals of PlayStation this generation. Like usual, this will be focused on games and the experience that the PlayStation ecosystem will bring to those games. Their primary focus will likely be exclusives and how there are certain gaming experiences that are only available on PlayStation. Sony will work hard to maintain its player-base as efficiently as possible, utilizing timed exclusives like Final Fantasy 7 Remake to encourage players to stick with PlayStation. Not only that, they will likely springboard off their fantastic sales success of the PS4 to encourage fans to stick to the platform.
Unlike the PS4 event previously, Sony will likely unveil the official hardware design during the conference in some form. With Xbox already teasing the Series X architecture and appearance, it would be odd for PlayStation to not even show the hardware at all. Along side the console deisgn, the updated controller design for Dualshock 5 should be shown off as well, similar to the Dualshock 4 reveal. If the patents are any indication of what to expect, there won't be much difference between the new design and the Dualshock 4 other than the supposed elimination of the light-bar, and triggers with haptic feedback on the controller.
What's lesser known is what kind of overall features the PS5 will have. Of the few things that have been confirmed, one of the main draws is the improved loading times on PS5 through use of an SSD. There was a very early demo of Marvel's Spiderman running on the new storage hardware, showing off improved texture and model loading speeds during high-speed movement through the world. Outside of that, features and capability of the hardware (outside of graphical fidelity) is a bit of a grey area with all new consoles. Concepts like cloud-computing were big talking points in the early PS4/Xbox One days, but very little came of the technology in terms of game development.
It's highly likely there will not be a PS5 price reveal or any details regarding cost during the presentation. Usually console pricing announcements are saved for E3, but since Sony is opting out of the trade show again this year, the PS5 is more likely to receive a supplementary State of Play presentation around the same time detailing the system's price among other things. On the very slim chance Sony does announce a price, it'd be hard to imagine anything over $499. Any more and Sony risks subjecting themselves to an early disadvantage should Xbox one-up them in price.
As it stands, Sony doesn't even know the price of the PlayStation 5 console, but in all fairness, it's too early to tell from its perspective. Sony wants to remain competitive and not make the same mistake twice with pricing its new console over the market like they did for the PS3. This suggests fans can expect a price point that is not heads-and-shoulders over most current price ranges.
Similar to the PS4 initial reveal, the technical specs of the console and how much graphical and processing power it can handle are likely to be revealed. With Xbox and Game Pass fundamentally changing the way games can be played, PS5's strong suit will be its exclusive games. Granted, it's not E3 time, so it doesn't need to reveal too many new games. Sony is marching to its own drum at this point, though, so it could easily reveal a bunch of new games alongside its new console to get the edge on Microsoft.
At the moment, Xbox and PlayStation are in an ever tighter battle, but Sony's silence speaks volumes. It shows that the company is taking its time and potentially developing a sound strategy for the PS5 launch. However, while these rumors and speculation are helping keep PlayStation on everyone's minds, that can only go so far before we receive the official unveiling of the PlayStation 5 in the coming weeks or months.
Sony's PlayStation 5 will be launching Holiday 2020.