The next generation of gaming is on the horizon.
Here we go! Earlier this year—before E3—Sony’s Mark Cerny announced that the company was working on their next generation console. He gave very few details, but said the next gen system would feature faster memory, a next generation solid state drive (SSD), and would support ray tracing—a somewhat recent breakthrough in the PC graphics space for the way lighting is rendered in real time, offering stunningly realistic visuals.
Fast forward to June at this year’s E3, and Microsoft officially unveiled they’re working on the next generation Xbox console codenamed Project Scarlett. Now just today, Sony officially announced the next PlayStation will indeed be called PlayStation 5 along with more details on PS5 than we currently have about the next Xbox. Here’s what we know so far for both:
Xbox Project Scarlett
- The next Xbox will feature a custom made AMD GPU based on it’s recent Navi graphics architecture
- It will also feature an AMD Zen 2 CPU
- Spinning hard drives are a thing of the past, with the next system instead opting for a next-generation SSD
- Microsoft claims Project Scarlett will offer four times more performance than Xbox One X when it comes to load times
- The company promised 120fps and 8K gaming support—though not the two together at the same time in most (if any) cases
- Long time supporters of the brand can take solace in knowing that Project Scarlett will be able to play just about every single game spanning from the original Xbox to the current Xbox One family of systems
- The company’s Project xCloud—it’s on demand game streaming service—will be supported
- We can expect to see the next Xbox launch Holiday 2020 alongside platform exclusive title Halo Infinite
PlayStation 5
- The console will officially be named PlayStation 5
- Like the next Xbox, the console will feature a custom made AMD Navi-based GPU as well as a more powerful AMD Zen 2 CPU
- It will feature haptic feedback all over the controller from the triggers to the joysticks. Developers will also be able to adjust tension for the L2 and R2 trigger buttons to give the sensation of pulling the string of a bow for example
- The new controller will charge via USB-C and will feature a larger battery. It’s said to weigh a little less than a current Xbox One controller with the batteries inside
- PS5 will also support a next-gen SSD as well as the ability to deliver game data in finer detail. For example, you’ll be able to download just multiplayer or just single player and freely store and remove the single player or multiplayer content you don’t want from your drive when you’re done playing it while being able to play what you do want to keep. This is something the current Xbox already supports thanks to tech Microsoft calles Intelligent Delivery. This may, in fact, be what Sony is using since the two companies have partnered in the cloud computing space with Microsoft providing Sony support on their back end. So, uh, hopefully games will download much faster now!
- Because SSD’s are being used, game developers no longer have to duplicate date to improve loading times on spinning hard drives, which is something they need to do now. This could result in smaller game sizes overall and is something Xbox will also benefit from.
- PlayStation’s ray tracing will be done on the GPU itself and will not be done via software. We assume the same will be said for Xbox, but we don’t know for sure.
- A new user interface is being created which will enable players to see what missions they have left as well as see mission progression for games before even launching them. Players will also have the ability to see events in real time for multiplayer titles before launching the game.
- Wired got to go hands-on with a PS5 tech demo and can confirm the leaked PS5 dev kit images are, in fact, real. We have a rendering from the images pictured above. It’s worth noting that dev kits are always bigger and more bland than the final consumer hardware that ships, so the dev kit above is absolutely no indication as to what final hardware will look like.
So yeah, that’s pretty much what we know so far. We aren’t even in Holiday 2019 yet, so you can expect a definite a slow drip of details from both platform holders leading up to E3 of next year where we’ll maybe see what the next consoles look like. But then again, we may not see them until closer to launch like with PS4 and Xbox One. We’ll update this article as more details become available.
