We’ve had some major PS5 updates over the past week, ranging from the first hands-on video with the DualSense Controller, to Pre-Order Updates, Performance Updates, Games, Graphics and so much more. So, get those snacks ready and here’s everything new in terms of the PS5!
Pre-Orders
First things first, there were a ton of rumors that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start as soon as possible. These were mostly coming from Twitter leaker ‘IronManPS5’, previously known as ‘PSERebus’, who’s actually been very accurate in the past. He started tweeting that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start on Monday, 13th July. This, unfortunately, did not happen.
We then heard the news that the PS5 Controller would get a hands-on look on Friday, 17th July, and that that would also be when the Pre-Orders would start. That did not happen either. But luckily, in that hands-on video/interview that Geoff Keighley had with Eric Lempel, the Global Head Marketing of PlayStation, Eric debunked those Pre-Order rumors as false. He said that Sony will let their customers know, ahead of time, when the Pre-Orders would start. They wouldn’t just start out of the blue and catch everyone by surprise, which is the good news.
A more strict & direct approach from Sony, with the Pre-Orders.
The bad news, or maybe this is actually good news as well, is that we now have confirmation that you would only be allowed to buy one PS5 per household as the stock would be quite low at launch. This was found by a Reddit user who was browsing the web page source code on ‘direct.playstation.com'. It seems that when you’ll try to add another PS5, you’ll get an error message saying that you can only purchase one Console. Now, in that code, it is revealed that Sony will also be adding labels on certain PS4 products that would be PS5 compatible, this includes Games and likely some PS4 Accessories as well.
Speaking of Labels, we actually got to see the PS5 label that would be on Game Cases, the top left label that we’ve had on PS4 & PS3 Game-Cases and so on. For the first time, with the PS5, the Label is black & white, so no more Blue PS5 Logo or anything like that. Sony seems to have fully embraced the white & black colour scheme that they’ve introduced on the PS5 Console and the PS5 Controller. I do love the minimalist look they’ve gone for.
Finally, seen as how we’re talking about Pre-Orders and Boxes, both Nikkei and Bloomberg report that Sony is increasing the PlayStation 5 manufacturing by around 50% with aims of reaching 10 million units by the end of 2020. Just to give you guys an idea, the PS4 sold 4.2 million units in 2013. The PS4 was released on November the 15th, which is around the same rumoured released date that the PS5 is said to come out.
The Gaming Community has increased significantly since 2013 and considering the price of the PS5, I do expect loads of users wanting to upgrade to the new Console. I don’t see twice the number of units sold as launch, compared to the PS4, I think that’s a bit too optimistic. But, if Sony manages to manufacture 10 million units of the PS5, that would solve the entire stock issue at launch.
Price
Now, let’s talk about the price, ‘IronManPS5’ tweeted the full prices for not just the PS5 itself, but also the prices for the Accessories. Even though he was wrong in terms of the Pre-Orders, he was right in the past, numerous times. So, even if his price leaks are not 100% correct, they should at least be very close to the final retail prices.
He says that the PS5 will cost $500, €500 or £450 in the UK. The PS4 Pro was priced at $400, the PS4 was also priced at $400, whereas the PS3 was priced at $500. This might seem like a lot, But do keep in mind that unlike a Smartphone, which can cost way over $1,000 and only used for two years or so, you would actually end up using a Console for a lot longer. This will probably be around five years or even more, which means that the $500 would be split into something like $100 a year, compared to $500 a year, which is what a high-end Smartphone would cost you.
The Digital Only PS5 may only come in at £350.
This $500 is just for the regular PS5, here will also be a ‘disk-less’ / Digital Only version of the PS5, which is said to cost $400, €400 or £350, the same price as the PS4. The only reason why you would get the more expensive PS5 is if you have any disk-based PS4 Games that you still want to play on the PS5. I do have a few disk Games, but I bought all of those when the PS4 came out, then I started moving towards Digital Games. Those old games that I got on disk can always just be bought again from the PlayStation Store as they’ve gotten so inexpensive now. I personally think that I would be going with the Digital Only version, especially since I really do prefer the way it looks.
The DualSense Controller is said to be $60, €60 or £55. The Charging Station for these Controller, which can charge two of them at the same time, that’s said to cost $30, €30 or £25. The PS5 Media Remote will also have the same price. The PS5 HD Camera is said to cost $60, €60 or £55 and finally, the Pulse 3D Wireless Headset will apparently cost $160, €180 or £130. I would say that these are some very good prices, for both the Consoles and the Accessories.
Controller Update
Now it’s time for the big one, the Controller.
As I mentioned before, Geoff Keighley, who’s pretty well known in the Gaming Industry, was the very first person outside of Sony themselves and the Developers, who has laid his hands on the PS5 Controller. The first thing I took from the full video and interview with PlayStation’s Eric Lempel, was the actual size of the Controller.
We’ve seen some alleged leaked images of the DualSense, where it looked gigantic, but now Geoff has showed us a side-by-side image against the PS4’s DualShock Controller. While the DualSense is indeed larger than the DualShock 4, it is not significantly larger. Realistically, the size and the weight should in fact make it more comfortable than the DualShock 4 was, at least this is what Sony is saying.
The first ‘hands-on’ clip with the DualSense revealed it’s not quite as unwieldy as we may have first thought.
We also got to see the bottom of the Controller for the very first time, which was something that for some strange reason, Sony has avoided showing. This made me think that maybe it was because Sony added two customisable Buttons there, just like the Back-Button Attachment on the DualShock 4. But now that we finally got to see the bottom of it, there are no Buttons at all, just a sticker.
Geoff also mentioned that the Speaker on the DualSense had a wider range of sound, compared to the DualShock 4 Speaker and also the fact that the Controller had a nice hefty weight to it. The game that he got to test was Astro’s Playroom, which is a spin-off from the PSVR’s highly praised AstroBot VR game, just in non-VR this time. The game lets you fully explore the functionality of the Controller, test out the Haptic Feedback, the Touchpad, the Adaptive Triggers and so on. He mentioned how cool the Triggers felt now that the Game Developers could actually implement different levels of pressure in them so that when you draw a Bow, it would feel entirely different from when you would fire a Gun. I can’t wait to try this.
I was expecting Geoff to be blown away by the Haptics or at least talk more about them. He did mention how realistic the game feels but I was just expecting him to praise the Haptic Touch a bit more.
Speaking of Astro, I’m assuming that Geoff was indeed playing this on a PS5 unit, which means that he also got to experience the PS5 to some extent but he didn’t talk about that at all here. However, Eric, PlayStation’s Global Head of Marketing, did talk a bit about the PS5 itself. Aside from the Pre-Order news that I mentioned before, he did talk about how Sony believes in Console Generations and Console Exclusives.
Games
This was in contrast to Microsoft, who will be enforcing Cross-Generation Compatibility for Games. So, any Games developed for the Xbox Series X, at least for the next two years, will also need to run on the Xbox One X as well as the Xbox One. I’ll talk about this more, in a separate video, so do Subscribe and enable Notifications for that.
But until then, Eric made a good point here, saying that Games such as ‘Ratchet & Clank – Rift Apart’, would not even be technically possible on previous Consoles at all. This is because in this game, which is a PS5 Exclusive, you can instantly travel through different dimensions and take the fights from one dimension to another, which is only achievable thanks to the PS5’s insanely fast SSD, which is more than 100 times faster than the PS4’s Hard-Drive. Making this game run on the PS4 would involve changing the Gameplay and the Story of the Game.
‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ was not fully developed on the PS5, which may explain some of the apparent compromises (Credit: PlayStation).
Not only that, but if you make the game for the PS4 first, which you would do in a down-up development cycle and is how most Games are made, you would not be able to implement such ground breaking features. Again, more about this in a separate video, but Eric does have a very good point. This is why the next PlayStation exclusive games to launch, such as ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’, ‘Ratchet & Clank - Rift Apart’, ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ and many more will only run on the PS5.
Speaking of Games, Insomniac games have confirmed that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ would run at 60FPS on the PS5, sort of. They said that you would get to choose between a 4K Mode and a Performance Mode with 60FPS.
So, here’s the thing, we were all hoping that this Console generation would finally be a 60FPS generation. Microsoft have already confirmed that their standard would be 60FPS for Games and even 120FPS in some cases. We’ve seen some rumors that Sony was planning to do the same in all of the Games to be released for the PS5. However, judging by what Insomniac has said, it seems like while you can indeed play Spider-Man Miles Morales in 60FPS, you would have to downgrade a few graphical settings and apparently, the Resolution too.
Now, we don’t really know what these downgrades would be as of yet, but I would say that in the best case scenario, we can turn off Ray-Tracing to enable 60FPS. In the worst case scenario, not only will Ray-Tracing be disabled for 60FPS, but the Resolution would also be dropped to 1440p, or even 1080p, and then dynamically upscaled to 4K. Judging from Insomniac’s message, it is looking quite likely that we will have some drop in Resolution as well.
Now, the good news is that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ wasn’t fully developed on the PS5. It’s still using the same engine as the 2018 ‘Spider-Man’, just modified to take better advantage of the PS5. It will be only when games such as ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ or the next ‘God of War’ come out, games which have been fully developed on the PS5 from scratch, that we might see 60FPS as a default on the highest possible settings.
For a start, it seems that Sony would be focusing on the highest possible Graphics first, and then the Frame-Rate. To be honest, even-though I’m personally disappointed in this decision, games such as ‘Last of Us: Part 2’ look absolutely breath-taking on the PS4 Pro, it honestly looked as if I was playing a PS5 game, it looked that good. So, I cannot wait to see what Sony has in store next.
If you look closely, you can still see a little bit of blue on the left-hand image (Credit: PlayStation Lifestyle).
Speaking of that, we actually had a recent leak from what seems to be a retailer that was listing a few Sony products. One of those products is a Black PS5 and a Black Controller with both having a red LED light, as opposed to the standard blue LED light that the White PS5 has. Now, we have heard many rumors that Sony is indeed working on different colour schemes for the PS5, one of them being black, so this could indeed be the real thing. I would expect Sony to give us an update on the colours as the pre-orders open.
Personally, I do think that this image is fake. It does look very photoshopped, not even to mention errors such as the back of the Controller still being white, or the red light still having a blue glow on the Console. This is definitely fake. Regardless of that being fake, we’ve actually modelled our very own concept of the PS5, in black, and I’m definitely team Matte Black. I would definitely go for this option, should Sony give us the option at launch.
You can of course change the colour of the LED bar on the PS4, kind of. This was done by the system itself, based on the games. I’m hoping that with the PS5, we would also have the option to have custom colours, that would be quite cool!