PlayStation 5 – What We Would Like to See [UPDATED]

With the continuing rabid speculation about the PlayStation 5, complete with foaming mouths and erratic behaviour, it’s time Elite Gamer got in on the act and shamelessly fed into this hype feedback loop and then made fun of some fake trailers.

Backwards AND Forwards

Sony did a lot right in the last five years and it started with the price. A €399 (£299, US$399) launch meant a whole €/$100 discount over its mis-announced rival. Along with that, Sony focused on its gaming prowess highlighting their first and second party strength. The public was not convinced of Microsoft’s commitment to gaming with a heavy focus on TV and media functionality coupled with the dreadful Hal-like Kinect.

If Sony can make keep the price down and simply stay true to the ‘gaming first’ ethos that sold 70 million consoles in 4.5 years – then the ninth generation is theirs to lose. Along with these, the PrimeVinister has a small wishlist…

Backwards compatibility may or may not be over-rated going by Microsoft’s own playtime numbers for Xbox 360 and Xbox (eh, Zero?) titles on their current hardware. But for those who do enjoy the convenience of BC or simply didn’t own previous generations of hardware, backwards compatibility is a big deal.

When you consider the incredible titles that made the PS4 what it is (Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted 4, Until Dawn etc.), it would be a huge draw for the few left on earth who don’t currently own a PS4. Imagine the PS4’s library available to play on day one.

Don’t leave our PS4 libraries out in the cold…

Dual storage bays is the most cost-effective way of allowing an SSD/hard-disk storage system. We’d all love a hybrid solution as standard but that would drive the price up. Allowing us to stick in a cheeky 512GB SSD would drastically cut load-times on games and apps a player uses on the reg. All of this speed while keeping a fat disk for the bulk storage. Win-win.

The proverb “Only the good die young” may have been an influence on the PS4 controller battery choice

A better battery in the controllers seems like an insignificant issue and the current system is certainly better than Microsoft’s stingy-bastard disposable battery tactics. However, the PS4 standard controller has the stamina of a gaming laptop. Please double the mAh of your next effort; remember when your Walkmen used to last forever?

No Intel Inside?

In terms of the internals of the PlayStation 5 (presumably that’s what it’ll be called), Thomas the News Engine wonders whether the release of the Xbox One X has made Sony think about upping the FLOPage even more than they were planning to. Given that we’re still probably 2 years out from release, it is possible that fans won’t be happy if the specs of the PlayStation 5 aren’t a mile (1.61km, 0.87NM) ahead of the Xbox One X.

Not many images of a not-yet-extant console’s CPU so have an image of their hated rival instead…

RAM is one of the more important and sometimes overlooked aspects of a console. Back in 2013 Sony immediately had the edge in this department after choosing 8GB of GDDR5 memory. Microsoft decided to go with much slower DDR3 RAM. With the Xbox One X coming with 12GB of GDDR5 memory, I don’t think fans of the PlayStation will be happy with the same amount of RAM as a 2-3 year-old console regardless of the One X’s premium price. That’s why I believe 16GB of GDDR5 memory is the sweet spot. It’ll leave plenty of free GBs for devs after the OS takes a couple. Considering that the PS3 and Xbox 360 only had 512MB compared to the PS4’s 8GB, doubling the amount of RAM isn’t that big of a leap.

The famously s**t RAM used in the OG Xbox One was similar to the type used in this punchcard mainframe. You may laugh now but this particular model was the first machine outside of an aerospace laboratory to be able to run Crysis on max. settings.

The GPU of the PS4 was an AMD next-gen Radeon based graphics engine. Sony’s in-house studios deserve a massive amount of credit for being able to produce visually stunning games on that GPU. It seems both Xbox and PS4 won’t be leaving AMD anytime soon given the price for performance ratio. With AMD’s next line of Graphics based hardware launching in 2019 perhaps Sony can strike a deal with AMD to get one of the latest AMD GPUs.

The PS4 Pro has delivered some sights to behold – Sony’s first-party ability to milk their machines is legendary.

Sony may well be focusing on promoting how many Teraflops of computing power the PlayStation 5 has. Mark Cerny has said in the past that the limits for next-gen would be around 8 Tflops which dwarfs both the Pro’s 4.2 and standard PS4’s 1.8. He also believes that 8 Tflops is the minimum required for native 4K gaming. The great thing about consoles is that you don’t need a €500+ GPU for great graphics. [Games Editor: ‘Great’ is a stretch next to an admittedly expensive PC.]

The CPU seems to be regularly overlooked by both Microsoft and Sony. Weak CPUs are the main reason why we rarely see 60fps games on eighth-generation consoles. In fact, when the Pro was announced many people believed that 1080p/60fps would be a given but as we have seen that’s not always been the case. Both the base PS4 and PS4 Pro use AMD x86 Jaguar architecture which was originally designed for portable devices.

Thankfully, AMD has released the Ryzen series of CPUs so most people are holding out hope that Sony will use the Ryzen architecture which will allow for increased frame rates/ more advanced AI/ destructible environments. The cheapest Ryzen 7 CPU is the Ryzen 1600 which currently costs around $180.

So, what do YOU want to see in the next generation of KutuaragiStation?? Do you think it’s time to axe the optical drive?? Would you prefer ‘affordable’ like PS1,2 and 4 or ‘bleeding edge but pricier’ like PS3?? Is it worth going full-solid state??

Do you think the PlayStation 5 will be influenced by the Xbox One X’s relative success (not selling like s**t was a huge win for MS after all) or are Sony continuing course uncorrected??

We shouldn’t be encouraging people by sharing this [UPDATED: A Challenger Appears]

This still hasn’t been taken down by the Illuminati nor has the dislike/like ratio hit a figure that flatters humanity’s intelligence.

Shut up & take my money #PS5 pic.twitter.com/W38P3BjCZq

— MrBlipsk (@MrBlipsk) January 15, 2018

The trailer was very obviously a poorly made fraud but we praise the effort. The 2005 iPod advertisementesque music was the first blatant indicator of fakery and that only starts one second in so people can be forgiven for believing it. Anyway…

The misformatted PlayStation at 0:01 was also a red-flag

[UPDATE] Just when you thought enough people had made a PS5 trailer, an even poorer one steps up to the plate. Behold the next generation complete with a cloudbusting 1TB of hard-drive space and a design that puts ReBoot to shame.