Slashdot Mirror
What To Expect From Sony's Next-Gen PlayStation (wired.com)
Daetrin writes: Sony is unwilling to confirm "Playstation 5" as the name, but their next console is "no mere upgrade" according to a report from Wired, which cites Sony executives -- who spoke on the record:
"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. Yet."
The console will also have a solid-state drive and is currently planned to be backward-compatible with both PS4 games and PSVR.
"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. Yet."
The console will also have a solid-state drive and is currently planned to be backward-compatible with both PS4 games and PSVR.
I wrote a few years ago about why people submit to console inflexibility. The reasons I came up with include these:
- Less chance of ending up with "fake game" shovelware even worse than E.T., Chase the Chuck Wagon, and other poster children of the 1983 crash
- No worry about reading the tea leaves that are PC game system requirements
- Little variation among PCs in an online multiplayer pickup group of strangers giving nobody an unfair competitive advantage
- Less cheating in an online multiplayer pickup group of strangers due to no mods
- No need for antivirus
- Offline use of disc games is more convenient for gamers in rural areas or deployed on military bases
- Less hardware variation means less chance of driver conflicts
- Living room friendly case by default
it makes me wonder why should I even purchase a console when a desktop will be infinitely better in terms of cost, performance, and longevity?
Playing on the couch with a controller? I mean if you're single you may get away with a battle station in your living room, but for the rest of us ... well we own consoles AND PCs for that reason.