Everyone has been referring to Sony’s next generation console as “PlayStation 5” for obvious reasons ever since its existence was confirmed, but now Sony has just come out and said it in a new blog post from Sony Interactive CEO Jim Ryan.
The official name of the console is indeed PlayStation 5, and as previously reported, it will be out in the holiday 2020 release window, alongside Xbox Scarlett, with Microsoft and Sony going head to head again in terms of generational releases.
Sony figured they might as well not break naming tradition now, as why mess with what works? PS4 has been a wildly successful system for Sony, and they have big expectations for PS5, though recent shakeups at the company have a few concerned.
Ryan’s blog post also surprisingly goes into some detail about the new controller. Sony is pretty famous for changing relatively little about its Dualshock over the years, and while that may also be true this time around, there are some changes coming (though no pictures are provided in this release).
The PlayStation 5 will adapt haptic vibration that will change based on the activity in the game. They give the example of how hitting a wall with a car will feel different than tackling someone in football. This is somewhat reminiscent of the Xbox One’s rumbling triggers which offer a range of feedback, or the Switch’s “HD Rumble” functionality of its Joy-Cons, so it seems like Sony wanted to join the advanced rumble party.
Past this, Ryan talks about “adaptive triggers” which will offer greater precision for various actions in gameplay so you can “feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain.” Again, this sounds at least somewhat similar to the current Xbox One triggers, though perhaps a bit more advanced.
My guess is that the current PS4 Dualshock touchpad is probably going away, but that isn’t mentioned and we don’t have an image of the controller yet, so we’ll see. But the touchpad was rarely used for its actual purpose in almost all games, usually just serving as a large “select” button in most instances. I would not expect it to return.
Apparently WIRED magazine is getting some big exclusive where more information about the PlayStation 5 is going to be revealed, though I would guess not the actual controller and box, as that will probably be saved for a Sony event in 2020. But it’s nice to know I can officially start calling it PlayStation 5, which I was doing anyway. More to come.
[“source=forbes”]
