This console generation is starting to get a bit long in the tooth. We’ve already had a half step hardware revisions with the PlayStation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X. Now Sony has opened up the kimono, ever so slightly, on what to expect for the PlayStation 5.

You can get the details at Wired, but here’s the top line information:

• Not arriving in 2019. Maybe 2020, if you’re lucky.
• Will have a solid state drive (SSD), speeding up load times
• This will not be a half step. Mark Cerny, Lead System Architect (and creator of Marble Madness) is promising that this will be a substantial upgrade in hardware and graphical capability (See blurb below)
• Current PSVR will be supported and confirmation that VR support is a Sony priority.

“PlayStation’s next-generation console ticks all those boxes, starting with an AMD chip at the heart of the device. (Warning: some alphabet soup follows.) The CPU is based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line and contains eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. The GPU, a custom variant of Radeon’s Navi family, will support ray tracing, a technique that models the travel of light to simulate complex interactions in 3D environments. While ray tracing is a staple of Hollywood visual effects and is beginning to worm its way into $10,000 high-end processors, no game console has been able to manage it.”

Wired.com

Sony has taken the first shot in the next generation. Now it’s Microsoft’s turn.

[Source: Wired.com]