It’s Exactly One Month Until The PlayStation 5 Global Launch

One month today, the world will get its hands on the PlayStation 5.

Another landmark in Sony’s gaming history is nearly here: PlayStation, 1994; PS2, 2000; PS3, 2006; PS4, 2013; and on November 19, 2020, the PS5.

First off, the games. Eric Lempel, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Sony Interactive Entertainment, earlier described the PS5’s launch game line-up as the ‘best we’ve ever seen in the history of PlayStation’.

There’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, the remake of Demon’s Souls, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Bugsnax, Destruction AllStars, Devil May Cry 5: Special Edition, Fortnite, Godfall, Planet Coaster: Console Edition, Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Watch Dogs Legion – and that’s not all of them.

Select PS4 games, such as the recent Ghost of Tsushima, will also benefit from the PS5 console’s Game Boost, which ‘may make PS4 games run with a higher or smoother frame rate’. You won’t be able to use your DualShock 4, but the new DualSense pads include several features like haptic feedback and an in-built microphone array.

What about price? Well, the standard console costs $499.99 (£449.99) and the Digital Edition with no disc slot costs $399.99 (£359.99). Particularly during the pandemic, many gamers have become more fond of disc-less buying; however, the pricier console also includes a 4K Ultra HD drive, bringing movies to life in crisp 2160p.

The most notable change in terms of specs is the switch to a custom 825GB SSD drive, which promises to vastly improve loading times on the new console and help it to handle multiple things at once (anyone who tries to access the home screen from Warzone on PS4 can testify to its slowness).

Both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are capable of ray-tracing, albeit the former falls slightly behind in terms of teraflops, with 10.28 as opposed to 12.

For the hardware lovers, here’s some raw PS5 specs: 8x Zen 2 cores @ 3.5GHz (variable frequency), 16 GB GDDR6/256-bit memory with a bandwidth of 448GB/s, and amazingly, an operating speed of 5.5 GB/s (raw), typical 8-9 GB/s (compressed). We’ll be looking at ‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it load times’ across all titles, with fast-travel in Spider-Man rendered near-instant.

The PS5 will first release on November 12 in the US, Japan, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea, before hitting the rest of the world on November 19.