It’s finally 2020, which means Sony’s next-generation console is fast approaching with a launch planned for sometime during this year’s holiday season. Throughout 2019, Sony began to reveal some of the first details about its next-gen console, PS5, and we only expect that to continue in the months ahead.
First, we know that the console’s official name. Unsurprisingly, the console is called the PlayStation 5. It will also have PS4 backwards compatibility and SSD storage, and it will support PSVR. The company has also outlined some green, energy-efficient initiatives it is planning for the next generation.
If Sony follows the outline for how the PS4 was properly unveiled, we can expect it to host a special PlayStation Meeting event. Rumors have suggested such an event could take place in February 2020, but Sony has not made any official announcements. If that does indeed happen, that could be when we learn about things like a price and launch game lineup. It’s unclear at this point if Sony intends to attend E3 2020 after skipping last year’s convention.
Below you can find all the details known about Sony’s upcoming console. It’s likely we’ll hear more details–big or small–in the coming months, so be sure to bookmark this page and check back often as more gets confirmed.
This is surely the question on everybody’s lips: when will the PS5 come out? Sony, as you’d expect, is tight-lipped on the matter, but it has confirmed a “holiday 2020” release window for the PlayStation 5. The company has been no more specific than that–Microsoft has also provided the same vague window–but historically, November has been a frequent
PS5 Price
Again, Sony has not stated how much its new console will cost, but it did say that the PS5’s price will be attractive to gamers. “I believe that we will be able to release it at an SRP [suggested retail price] that will be appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set,” said Mark Cerny, the lead architect of the PS4 who’s currently working on its successor.
Of course, you wouldn’t expect Sony to say anything different, but one gets the feeling the company has learned from the PS3’s exorbitant price tag–and the console’s subsequent struggles–and the PS4’s more reasonable cost and subsequent successes.
Will PS5 Be Backwards Compatible With PS4 games?
Cerny also confirmed the PS5 will be backwards compatible with PS4 games, as the two consoles are built upon similar internal architectures. This will be welcome news for those who were disappointed by the PS4’s lack of backwards compatibility with PS3, PS2, and PS1 games.
SIE president Jim Ryan told GameSpot sister site CNET backwards compatibility and cross-gen are important for the PS5 to help players have a seamless transition.
“Whether it’s backwards compatibility or the possibility of cross-generational play, we’ll be able to transition that community to next-gen,” he said. “It won’t be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship.”
In yet more welcome news, PS4 games will even run faster than they do on your current console, in part because the PS5 will contain a solid state drive, as opposed to hard drives that current consoles ship with. Cerny has demonstrated a load screen from Insomniac’s Spider-Man taking less than a second on a PS5 development kit, compared with 15 seconds on a PS4 Pro.
Sony showed off the faster loading times during an investor presentation in May. You can see the video below, which was captured by Wall Street Journal reporter Takashi Mochizuki.
PS5 Specs And Disc Drive
This is where Sony has been surprisingly forthright with new information. The company has confirmed the PlayStation 5 will contain an AMD chip that has a CPU based on the third-generation Ryzen. It’ll have eight cores of the seven-nanometer Zen 2 microchip. The console will also support 8K gameplay, but this will of course be dependent upon TVs catching up.
Graphics will be driven by a custom version of Radeon’s Navi line. This graphics chip will support ray-racing, something which is starting to become popular in movies and video games. Although it is traditionally thought of as a lighting technique, Cerny says this technique could also improve game audio. In fact, PS5 will fully support 3D audio.
The aforementioned SSD is a big detail too, as it means games will load faster and be able to handle more objects on-screen at once than current HDD-driven consoles. Characters and cameras could move faster through game worlds, as environments could be loaded in much faster than they are at present.
As one final detail, we know the PS5 will not go the route of the Xbox One S All-Digital Edition, which doesn’t include a disc drive. Instead, the PS5 will include a disc drive, so rest assured you’ll still be able to buy and play physical games. PS5 discs will have a capacity of 100 GB, and the console will also support 4K Blu-Rays.
Sony has also confirmed that the PS5 is capable of supporting 4K visuals at 120Hz for those who have TVs that can support that. 120Hz is a refresh rate around double the rate of standard TVs.
PS5 Controller
Sony has opened up on its vision for the PlayStation 5’s controller by saying: “One of our goals with the next generation is to deepen the feeling of immersion when you play games, and we had the opportunity with our new controller to reimagine how the sense of touch can add to that immersion.
“To that end, there are two key innovations with the PlayStation 5’s new controller. First, we’re adopting haptic feedback to replace the ‘rumble’ technology found in controllers since the 5th generation of consoles. With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud.
“The second innovation is something we call adaptive triggers, which have been incorporated into the trigger buttons (L2/R2). Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions. Game creators have started to receive early versions of the new controller, and we can’t wait to see where their imagination goes with these new features at their disposal.”
In addition to the above comments from Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan, Sony has also separately confirmed to Wired that the controller “doesn’t have a name yet,” but contains an improved speaker, USB-C connectivity, and a larger-capacity battery.
Will PS5 Support PSVR?
The current PSVR will indeed be supported by PS5, as will the PlayStation Move controllers. “I won’t go into the details of our VR strategy,” Cerny has stated, “beyond saying that VR is very important to us and that the current PSVR headset is compatible with the new console.” The system architect stopped short of saying whether a new PSVR device will ever come out, however.
The Logo
It was believed that Sony’s briefing at CES 2020 could bring with it some PlayStation 5 news, but that only barely turned out to be the case. Sony’s Jim Ryan appeared on stage to share some impressive stats regarding the PS4 and to reveal the PlayStation 5 logo, which you can see below. It’s hardly surprising, maintaining the same style used for recent generations. Beyond that, Sony had nothing new to discuss about PS5 during the tech-focused event.
Energy Efficiency
Though Sony has been generally quiet about the PS5 since its announcement, it came forward to reveal just slightly more information in conjunction with the announcement of a United Nations initiative. The Playing for the Planet alliance aims to make the video game industry more environmentally friendly. To that end, Sony announced that the next generation of its hardware will use dramatically less power when placed into suspend/sleep mode. Just one million PS5 users turning on the energy-efficient feature would save enough electricity to power 1,000 US homes. The company is also conducting a carbon footprint assessment and looking into more energy-efficient data centers.
PS5 Games
We don’t yet know many confirmed games coming to PS5. It’s reasonable to presume annual titles like FIFA and Call of Duty would make the jump to PS5, though their developers haven’t stated anything concrete.
Currently, the only confirmed PS5 game is Godfall, a loot-based melee action-RPG. It’s scheduled for late 2020, which more than likely makes it a PS5 launch game. However, time will tell!
The other game possibly confirmed to be playable on PS5 is the Final Fantasy VII remake, after Square Enix’s president and CEO Yosuke Matsuda said: “I believe that our teams have made it so that the game will support both the next generation and the current generation of consoles. I believe it is being developed so that it is going to be playable on both, so I’m not really concerned about that and I believe that the fans are also going to be able to enjoy it on both, including the next-generation of consoles.”
However, it’s not clear whether Matsuda was referring to a dedicated PS5 edition of the game, or if he was simply referring to the PS4 version being playable on PS5 via backward compatibility. If it’s the latter, then we can technically count every PS4 game as playable on PS5.
PlayStation 5’s new user interface will allow you to see more details about friends’ games without opening the applications themselves. “Even though it will be fairly fast to boot games,” says Cerny, “We don’t want the player to have to boot the game, see what’s up, boot the game, see what’s up. Multiplayer game servers will provide the console with the set of joinable activities in real time. Single-player games will provide information like what missions you could do and what rewards you might receive for completing them—and all of those choices will be visible in the UI. As a player you just jump right into whatever you like.”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Artificial intelligence‘s recent rise to the forefront of business has left most office workers wondering how often they should use the technology and whether a computer will eventually replace them.
Those were among the highlights of a recent study conducted by the workplace communications platform Slack. After conducting in-depth interviews with 5,000 desktop workers, Slack concluded there are five types of AI personalities in the workplace: “The Maximalist” who regularly uses AI on their jobs; “The Underground” who covertly uses AI; “The Rebel,” who abhors AI; “The Superfan” who is excited about AI but still hasn’t used it; and “The Observer” who is taking a wait-and-see approach.
Only 50% of the respondents fell under the Maximalist or Underground categories, posing a challenge for businesses that want their workers to embrace AI technology. The Associated Press recently discussed the excitement and tension surrounding AI at work with Christina Janzer, Slack’s senior vice president of research and analytics.
Q: What do you make about the wide range of perceptions about AI at work?
A: It shows people are experiencing AI in very different ways, so they have very different emotions about it. Understanding those emotions will help understand what is going to drive usage of AI. If people are feeling guilty or nervous about it, they are not going to use it. So we have to understand where people are, then point them toward learning to value this new technology.
Q: The Maximalist and The Underground both seem to be early adopters of AI at work, but what is different about their attitudes?
A: Maximalists are all in on AI. They are getting value out of it, they are excited about it, and they are actively sharing that they are using it, which is a really big driver for usage among others.
The Underground is the one that is really interesting to me because they are using it, but they are hiding it. There are different reasons for that. They are worried they are going to be seen as incompetent. They are worried that AI is going to be seen as cheating. And so with them, we have an opportunity to provide clear guidelines to help them know that AI usage is celebrated and encouraged. But right now they don’t have guidelines from their companies and they don’t feel particularly encouraged to use it.
Overall, there is more excitement about AI than not, so I think that’s great We just need to figure out how to harness that.
Q: What about the 19% of workers who fell under the Rebel description in Slack’s study?
A: Rebels tend to be women, which is really interesting. Three out of five rebels are women, which I obviously don’t like to see. Also, rebels tend to be older. At a high level, men are adopting the technology at higher rates than women.
Q: Why do you think more women than men are resisting AI?
A: Women are more likely to see AI as a threat, more likely to worry that AI is going to take over their jobs. To me, that points to women not feeling as trusted in the workplace as men do. If you feel trusted by your manager, you are more likely to experiment with AI. Women are reluctant to adopt a technology that might be seen as a replacement for them whereas men may have more confidence that isn’t going to happen because they feel more trusted.
Q: What are some of the things employers should be doing if they want their workers to embrace AI on the job?
A: We are seeing three out of five desk workers don’t even have clear guidelines with AI, because their companies just aren’t telling them anything, so that’s a huge opportunity.
Another opportunity to encourage AI usage in the open. If we can create a culture where it’s celebrated, where people can see the way people are using it, then they can know that it’s accepted and celebrated. Then they can be inspired.
The third thing is we have to create a culture of experimentation where people feel comfortable trying it out, testing it, getting comfortable with it because a lot of people just don’t know where to start. The reality is you can start small, you don’t have to completely change your job. Having AI write an email or summarize content is a great place to start so you can start to understand what this technology can do.
Q: Do you think the fears about people losing their jobs because of AI are warranted?
A: People with AI are going to replace people without AI.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would provide up to $325 million to Hemlock Semiconductor for a new factory, a move that could help give Democrats a political edge in the swing state of Michigan ahead of election day.
The funding would support 180 manufacturing jobs in Saginaw County, where Republicans and Democrats were neck-in-neck for the past two presidential elections. There would also be construction jobs tied to the factory that would produce hyper-pure polysilicon, a building block for electronics and solar panels, among other technologies.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on a call with reporters that the funding came from the CHIPS and Science Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022. It’s part of a broader industrial strategy that the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, supports, while Republican nominee Donald Trump, the former president, sees tariff hikes and income tax cuts as better to support manufacturing.
“What we’ve been able to do with the CHIPS Act is not just build a few new factories, but fundamentally revitalize the semiconductor ecosystem in our country with American workers,” Raimondo said. “All of this is because of the vision of the Biden-Harris administration.”
A senior administration official said the timing of the announcement reflected the negotiating process for reaching terms on the grant, rather than any political considerations. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss the process.
After site work, Hemlock Semiconductor plans to begin construction in 2026 and then start production in 2028, the official said.
Running in 2016, Trump narrowly won Saginaw County and Michigan as a whole. But in 2020 against Biden, both Saginaw County and Michigan flipped to the Democrats.
Although no one likes a know-it-all, they dominate the Internet.
The Internet began as a vast repository of information. It quickly became a breeding ground for self-proclaimed experts seeking what most people desire: recognition and money.
Today, anyone with an Internet connection and some typing skills can position themselves, regardless of their education or experience, as a subject matter expert (SME). From relationship advice, career coaching, and health and nutrition tips to citizen journalists practicing pseudo-journalism, the Internet is awash with individuals—Internet talking heads—sharing their “insights,” which are, in large part, essentially educated guesses without the education or experience.
The Internet has become a 24/7/365 sitcom where armchair experts think they’re the star.
Not long ago, years, sometimes decades, of dedicated work and acquiring education in one’s field was once required to be recognized as an expert. The knowledge and opinions of doctors, scientists, historians, et al. were respected due to their education and experience. Today, a social media account and a knack for hyperbole are all it takes to present oneself as an “expert” to achieve Internet fame that can be monetized.
On the Internet, nearly every piece of content is self-serving in some way.
The line between actual expertise and self-professed knowledge has become blurry as an out-of-focus selfie. Inadvertently, social media platforms have created an informal degree program where likes and shares are equivalent to degrees. After reading selective articles, they’ve found via and watching some TikTok videos, a person can post a video claiming they’re an herbal medicine expert. Their new “knowledge,” which their followers will absorb, claims that Panda dung tea—one of the most expensive teas in the world and isn’t what its name implies—cures everything from hypertension to existential crisis. Meanwhile, registered dietitians are shaking their heads, wondering how to compete against all the misinformation their clients are exposed to.
More disturbing are individuals obsessed with evangelizing their beliefs or conspiracy theories. These people write in-depth blog posts, such as Elvis Is Alive and the Moon Landings Were Staged, with links to obscure YouTube videos, websites, social media accounts, and blogs. Regardless of your beliefs, someone or a group on the Internet shares them, thus confirming your beliefs.
Misinformation is the Internet’s currency used to get likes, shares, and engagement; thus, it often spreads like a cosmic joke. Consider the prevalence of clickbait headlines:
You Won’t Believe What Taylor Swift Says About Climate Change!
This Bedtime Drink Melts Belly Fat While You Sleep!
In One Week, I Turned $10 Into $1 Million!
Titles that make outrageous claims are how the content creator gets reads and views, which generates revenue via affiliate marketing, product placement, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Clickbait headlines are how you end up watching a TikTok video by a purported nutrition expert adamantly asserting you can lose belly fat while you sleep by drinking, for 14 consecutive days, a concoction of raw eggs, cinnamon, and apple cider vinegar 15 minutes before going to bed.
Our constant search for answers that’ll explain our convoluted world and our desire for shortcuts to success is how Internet talking heads achieve influencer status. Because we tend to seek low-hanging fruits, we listen to those with little experience or knowledge of the topics they discuss yet are astute enough to know what most people want to hear.
There’s a trend, more disturbing than spreading misinformation, that needs to be called out: individuals who’ve never achieved significant wealth or traded stocks giving how-to-make-easy-money advice, the appeal of which is undeniable. Several people I know have lost substantial money by following the “advice” of Internet talking heads.
Anyone on social media claiming to have a foolproof money-making strategy is lying. They wouldn’t be peddling their money-making strategy if they could make easy money.
Successful people tend to be secretive.
Social media companies design their respective algorithms to serve their advertisers—their source of revenue—interest; hence, content from Internet talking heads appears most prominent in your feeds. When a video of a self-professed expert goes viral, likely because it pressed an emotional button, the more people see it, the more engagement it receives, such as likes, shares and comments, creating a cycle akin to a tornado.
Imagine scrolling through your TikTok feed and stumbling upon a “scientist” who claims they can predict the weather using only aluminum foil, copper wire, sea salt and baking soda. You chuckle, but you notice his video got over 7,000 likes, has been shared over 600 times and received over 400 comments. You think to yourself, “Maybe this guy is onto something.” What started as a quest to achieve Internet fame evolved into an Internet-wide belief that weather forecasting can be as easy as DIY crafts.
Since anyone can call themselves “an expert,” you must cultivate critical thinking skills to distinguish genuine expertise from self-professed experts’ self-promoting nonsense. While the absurdity of the Internet can be entertaining, misinformation has serious consequences. The next time you read a headline that sounds too good to be true, it’s probably an Internet talking head making an educated guess; without the education seeking Internet fame, they can monetize.
