PlayStation 5 Spec Reveal: The Story Behind the Numbers

It's coming! Yes, the next generation of video games is coming soon. We are at the stage when numerous leaks from industry "insiders" start to paint the picture of what the next generation of games will be about. We've seen many leaks over the past few months, particularly on the next PlayStation (i.e. PS5) but also on the next Xbox console (codename: Anaconda). But last week something very interesting happened: on a seemingly random Tuesday morning in April, we awoke to new trending article on wire with the headline "Exclusive: What to Expect From Sony's Next-Gen PlayStation". While at first glance it seemed like just another article from a supposed "leak" to be taken with a grain of salt, reading the first line of the article revealed a quote from the lead system architect himself Mark Cerny. Whoa! Is this official information from Sony? Indeed it was and it took the gaming media by complete surprise. While little information was actually revealed, what was revealed is plenty to get excited about. The specs look great, but in this article i want to look behind the numbers and discuss what can be gleamed reading between the lines a bit. Lets dive right in!

1. Not Another PS4 - Sony Back To Pushing The Limits 

PS2 Tech Demo from TGS 2009               

Historically, most new console generations brought with it brand new state of the art technology that could not be found anywhere else. The goal from the manufacturers was to build a machine that would stay technically relevant for years by being on the bleeding edge at the time of release. This was true for systems like the PS1, N64, PS2, Xbox, Xbox360, and PS3 among others. However, we saw this trend stop with the arrival of the PS4 (and Xbox One).

With the price of components needed to make a cutting edge machine increasing (or the level of hardware need to make the same jump increasing due to law of diminishing returns) we saw the PS4 release with what most would consider mid-range hardware even at its time of release in 2013. The focus was on making the switch to x86 hardware and making the development process much easier for developers as opposed to stuffing the box with cutting edge components.

 This switch saw Sony (for the first time) move away from developing it's own bespoke hardware that can be unique and cutting edge and instead use relatively off the shelf parts from AMD. The result was a nicely balanced box that could deliver cutting edge games but that couldn't keep it with high end PCs even at launch (remember how several launch titles ran at sub-1080p resolution?)

Confirmed PS5 Spec Courtesy of Eurogamer

Well, the most exciting thing about what Sony revealed with the PS5 specs is that it is indeed going back to its roots and targeting bleeding edge and forward thinking technology that gamers have not yet seen (or seen in an extremely limited fashion thus far). Real time ray tracing? Check! 8K resolution support? Check! Latest state of art CPU and GPU architecture and manufacturing process? Check! Advancements in 3D audio? Check! State of art SSD drive? Check! Indeed, it looks like Sony is willing to invest in making a true next generation machine that is a leap in almost every meaningful way from it's predecessor. PS4 who?

2. Sony Only Discussed The Least Interesting Aspects Of The System

Sony revealed some really cool specs and the gaming world was in a frenzy over the first official next generation information for several weeks. However, if you look behind the numbers and think about it from a marketing perspective you have to ask yourself why did Sony reveal the things it did but still stay silent on so many other aspects of the system? Why reveal anything now?

The answer is simple: the things they did reveal are going to be standard aspects of next gen across not just PS4 but the other competitors as well including the next gen Xbox. In other words, the things they did reveal are not "exclusive" features of PS5 and thus they don't stand to lose much by making it public. You can bet that the next Xbox at least will have an SSD standard, 7nm processors for CPU and GPU, ray tracing capabilities, and advanced 3D audio among other things. Sony smartly just came out first to announce that they are working on this advanced tech for their next gen machine which puts them ahead in the PR battle with Mircrosoft in particular. Now when Microsoft does announce their plans for next gen and they mention ray tracing, SSDs, Zen2 CPU etc it will be received as the next Xbox has those things "too". Sony will secure the mind share that the technology was theirs first which will go along way to getting the hardcore early adopters on board from day1.

It goes without saying that the more interesting and exciting aspects of the system that will be the exclusive features I like to call the "differentiators" have yet to be revealed. How will PS4 backward compatibility work? What will be the new controller for the PS5? How much RAM and bandwidth will the system have? Will there be a new VR headset? Will their be an expanded cloud streaming service? We may not know the answer to these questions for a while, but I can tell you that these answers will be the features that will separate the PS5 from the competition and Sony will remain tight lipped on details until closer to launch. 

3. Having A Standard SSD Can Enhance Games in New Ways 

Regardless of exactly how fast the SSD will be in the next PlayStation, the fact that it will be standard in every console will indeed be a game changer for developers. Up until now, a user can swap in an SSD into the PS4, Xbox One, and PC and enjoy faster streaming and load times in games. However, developers still were limited in designing games to a much slower stand hard drive since not every gamer on any platform will have an SDD. For example, in the wired article, Mark Cerny used the example of the speed in which Spiderman swings through the city is limited by the time it takes to read the environmental data off the HDD. If you swapped in an SSD on your PS4, it wouldn't change this because the game had to be designed to accommodate the many users with the standard HDD that comes with the system.  

Now that the baseline speed for disc reads and writes will be so much faster with the standard SSD, we can now see new enhancements in games impossible to this point. Instant fast travel, much faster traversal speeds, eliminated pop-in, imperceptible LOD transitions, and smoother mip mapping are just scratching the surface. We could see meaningful improvements in how fast we can traverse an open world, how rich the virtual environments look, and more fluid multiplayer games as well. Whatever this brings, it will be an unshackling for developers limited to slow HDD speeds for decades and we will see improvements in the game design that have not been seen (even on the PC) to date. 

4. Sony's Timing Not a Coincidence

The obvious question that came up when this information first came out was why would Sony choose a seemingly random Tuesday morning to release an exclusive story piece to a single online publication for a console that is still at least a year away? Well first of all, that Tuesday was not as random as it may seem. It was also the day that Microsoft had planned to hold it's monthly Inside Xbox livestream. Coincidence? I think not!

Perhaps Sony thought that Microsoft might have announced some general info on their next gen Xbox plans at that broadcast or some other story that may have garnered headlines. Nevertheless, the story that dominated the video game news that entire week was not the announcement of the disc-less Xbox One, but instead the preliminary specs of the next gen PlayStation. Also, E3 2019 is coming and Microsoft has made no secret about the fact that it plans on going "big" at E3 this year especially since Sony will not be present at E3 this year for the first time ever. Sony was smart to get some info out ahead of Microsoft's own official reveal so that they are not totally buried in the press from Microsoft's E3 news. Once again, Sony has stolen a bit of Microsoft's thunder.

Furthermore, it's no secret that leaks of PS5 specs were reaching a fever pitch. It seemed like there was a new leak with seemingly real information coming at least once a month recently. In particular there was one leak from a supposed AAA developer that actually released back in December but did not get picked up until around March 2019 that in retrospect was right On regarding the PS5 information. Mark Cerny's interview with Wired simply confirmed most of what was in the leak. Perhaps Sony thought it wise to get a bit ahead of these leaks and control the narrative a bit so their isn't so much random speculation going on. This leak was so accurate that it even predicted a April "small reveal" for the PS5 specs which is exactly what happened. So that begs the question: is the other information in that leak (that Sony has not spoken about yet) also true? If you haven't seen it, check out the full leak details here.

5. Game Changer - Enhanced PS4 Backward Compatibility?

This is probably my favorite possible feature of the next generation PlayStation that nobody is yet talking about in detail. There have been a number of patent leaks going back to last year that seem to point to a deeper level of backwards compatibility in the next PlayStation that will span not just PS4 but possibly the entire family of PlayStation consoles (PS1, PS2, and PS3). If this is true, the PS5 may be able to not only run an older title but automatically enhance the title on the fly to bring to quality closer to that of the next generation level.

This is similar to how Microsoft handles backward compatibility on the Xbox One platforms where on the X in particular the result is essentially a remaster of older titles running at near 4K resolution with better effects and performance. In Microsoft's case, they had to invest heavily with a team of well over 100 engineers and testers who have to manually code and test each older title that will be part of the backwards compatibly program (which is why there is so relatively few titles available). This is because their solution is purely in software which means that compatibility is more difficult to achieve.

However, Sony appears to be designing the PS5 from the gate to perform similar enhancements in hardware. This could mean much broader coverage of titles as well as much less of an investment of long-term resources on Sony's part. If this is true, it also add credence to the rumors that some of the late PS4 titles such as Ghosts of Tsushima, The Last of Us: Part II, and Death Stranding will be cross gen releases on both PS4 and PS5. The twist is what if there isn't a separate PS5 release at all? What if the PS4 title that is developed is released but designed to scale to the specs of the machine it is running on? On the PS4 and PS4 Pro, it will have a certain level of quality but when run on the PS5, it will detect it and automatically scale up the quality to match the next gen specs (a la PC). Hmmm?

I don't think it is a coincidence that a big part of the wired article was with Mark Cerny discussing how Spiderman (PS4 title released in 2018) was enhanced while running on the next gen platform. The SSD speed improvements could just be the tip of the iceberg. Imagine being able to pop in your original PS4 copy of Spiderman into the PS5 and see it running in native 4K with higher resolution textures and assets, better shadows, higher quality lighting, and instant load times? Of course for Sony to really nail this, it will have to be a cross buy system (meaning you buy the game once and it just works on both platforms). Too good to be true? Maybe, but based on what we've seen and heard already it's not out of the realm of possibility.

6. 8K Resolution Support? No Way!

This is an interesting one as most of quick to dismiss the possibility of this being true from a technical and business standpoint. The arguments are sound against it: from a business standpoint it doesn't make sense as the very first 8K Tvs are just coming to market now and there is virtually zero 8K content available. Why would you build a console to support a technology that will have such a small and niche audience? The answer is perhaps a bit complicated but I will point out that this is not unprecedented for Sony in particular. 

The PS2 supported DVDs at launch and the PS3 was among the first devices to support Blu-Ray discs when it first released while pushing a full HD 1080p resolution for the platform. Remember that Sony is also a consumer electronics company that builds TVs and already has a massive 8K LED TV releasing this year. It makes sense that their next gen console will be able to provide 8K content to that TV especially considering that 8K broadcast may not ever come (we still don't have 4K broadcast signals for cable/satellite), there is no word of an 8K disc format (UHD Blu-Ray may be the last), and 8K streaming will surely come but will take some time and will be limited to consumers with very robust network speeds. Again, with Sony going back to the older model of really pushing bleeding edge tech in their consoles, 8K is one of the best forward thinking techs that they could implement that will be a great marketing checkpoint for the console's early adopters.

Now from a technical standpoint, the argument against 8K support being feasible generally revolves around the following: on the PC, the highest end GPUs such as the RTX 2080ti can only just support native 4K with 60+ fps with consistency and that card cost $1100 on it's own. Surely the PS5 won't have a GPU quite matching a 2080ti so how can they even think about supporting 8K in games. The answer is pretty simple if you just look at the past consoles like the PS3 and the PS4.

First let me get this out of the way and be clear. Having "support" for a resolution does NOT mean that every game will output at that resolution. The actual rendering resolution is a developer choice and if developers choose to stick to a certain resolution, it doesn't mean that the hardware does not support it! Let's look at two examples really quickly. The PS3 was a full HD 1080p machine! The hardware (i.e HDMI chip and video encoder) supported up to 1080p, Blu-Ray discs and other video apps outputted at 1080p, and even the system UI rendered at a native 1080p when run on a 1080p display. The SDK also allowed developers to output a game at a native 1080p if they so choose. However, we all know that most PS3 games that were released were rendered at 720p or lower resolution. This was because the standard for that gen in terms of visual complexity was a bit too much for the PS3 hardware to render at 1080p. But that does NOT mean the system did not support 1080p. There were some games released on PS3 in native 1080p and in every way that the hardware can be, it was indeed a 1080p machine. 

The same is true when looking at the PS4 pro as a 4K machine. The hardware is fully capable of outputting a full 3840 x 2160 4K image from video and games. Again, when running it on a 4K display, the UI is natively rendered at a full 4K, any video streaming apps will output at 4K, and any games that was developed at 4K will output a 4K signal. I am so tired of hearing people dismiss the PS4 Pro as a 4K machine or the PS3 as a 1080p (or the Xbox One as a 1080p machine) simply because most titles don't release at maximum resolution. That is not a hardware limitation and it is not a requirement for titles to release at a maximum resolution for the system to be said to have support of that maximum resolution.

With that said, what will the 8K support in the PS5 look like? No it will not be the case where we see a large number of titles render a native 8K image as there is not enough processing power to do that for the vast majority of PS4 era titles, never mind the next generation. However, it is entirely possible that the system will completely support 8K resolution in terms of the HDMI spec (2.1 which can support 8K 60fps), GPU frame buffer size, and codecs for video processing. Similar to what we saw with the PS3 for 1080p and Xbox One S/PS4 Pro for 4K, if the PS5 is connected to an 8K display, then it will upscale all of the output to a full 8K resolution. The UI may render at a native 8K, any streaming apps that support it may output at 8K, and all games will be upscaled to a full 8K frame buffer. It's also possible that an 8K checkerboarding rendering may not be off the cards for some games as well (which will reduce the necessary processing load on the GPU by about half). The end result is that everything  that comes out of the system will look better on an 8K TV than it does on the 4K TV. Most devs will choose a lower native rendering resolution due to balance of quality vs performance given the expected visual complexity of next gen games. However, it is entirely possible that the PS5 will be one of the few devices to actually maximize the quality of your 8K TV for years to come.