Uncharted 4
Credit: Sony
It’s been a bit of a meme for the past few months. Microsoft has been steadily revealing more and more information about it’s new console since December, when it unveiled both the name and the form factor for the Xbox Series X. Sony, on the other hand, has been coy: it revealed specs in a somewhat dry developer-facing presentation, it showed us the controller, and it confirmed that yes, the logo looks about what you’d expect the PS5 to look like. Now, we’re finally going to be able to see a little bit more.
On June 4, Sony will be hosting its first major user-facing PS5 event, seemingly in place of whatever it is the company was planning on doing instead of E3, which it wasn’t planning on attending anyways. As is typical with Sony events, the focus seems to be on games.
Elsewhere, there’s been some speculation that we’re bound to see the form factor soon, because these things are hard to keep under wraps once mass production begins in earnest.
So that means we’re going to see some next-gen games, and that’s a big opportunity for Sony. Microsoft is pursuing an ecosystem-based development strategy, for the time being developing all of its first-party games for both the Xbox Series X and it’s predecessors, the Xbox One and Xbox One X. Sony has made no such commitment, and has indicated that it wants to show experiences specifically tailored to next-gen hardware. Presumably, Sony is making at least one next-gen game, unencumbered by older hardware and produced by a studio from the manufacturer’s stellar stable of first-party developers. It would make for a big, flashy way to introduce the console, particularly if it does so with the sorts of extended gameplay reveals it’s coming to be known for.
It’s an exciting moment. The company—as well as Epic Games and plenty of developers—have spent time talking about how the PS5’s custom SSD is a game-changing development, allowing for experiences that simply weren’t possible on older hardware. Microsoft, however, was able to successfully frame the early conversation around teraflops, a measure of raw computing power of which the Xbox Series X has more. If Sony company can show off some sort of true showcase, it could shift that conversation once more.
If not, it certainly wouldn’t be the end of the world. Sony won this generation hands down, and that momentum is a huge boon coming into the next one, particularly since backwards compatibility means that players will be more likely to stick with the ecosystem where they own their games. But anticipation for the true PS5 reveal has been building for a while now, and it seems like we’re finally going to get it.
Source: Forbes
Edited BY Harry Miller
