Sony announces PlayStation 5 details, out late 2020

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan on Tuesday announced that the next PlayStation will be called PlayStation 5, with a target launch date of the US holiday season of 2020. The holiday season runs from late November to the New Year.

In a blog post, Ryan revealed details of the upcoming console's new controller design, saying that it will feature haptic feedback, replacing the rumbling feature present in the current DualShock 4 controller that ships with the PlayStation 4. This, he says, will allow players to feel a broader range of feedback, like crashing into a wall in a race car feeling much different than making a tackle on the football field, in addition to allowing sensing a variety of textures.

Another design element Ryan announced is adaptive triggers, with the platform incorporating it into the L2/R2 triggers. This, in combination with haptic feedback, allows developers to program the resistance of the triggers so that players can feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. Ryan said that developers have begun getting an early version of the new controller.

In addition to the blog post, Wired revealed that the PlayStation 5 will feature a revamped user interface, with lead architect Mike Cerny saying that it will show what a player can do in a given game, be it seeing what activity they can join in a multiplayer game or what mission they can do in a single-player game, and what rewards it will offer. This is in contrast with the PlayStation 4 UI, which has received criticism for being too bare-bones from some players.

Earlier this year, Sony had announced key details of the PlayStation 5's technical specifications, with the system being powered by a custom 8-core AMD Zen 2 CPU and a Navi GPU. Cerny had also announced that the PS5 would support hardware-accelerated ray-tracing, which saw its introduction to mainstream computing in Nvidia's Turing GPU lineup, alongside a new, custom SSD design promising significant gains in load times.

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