Sony’s Mark Cerny reveals details for PlayStation 5

Mark Cerny, American game programmer and lead system architect for the PS 4, has revealed the details for Sony’s next-generation PlayStation console.

In an interview with Wired, Cerny revealed  PlayStation 5 would be getting a hardware boost partly following an improvement in its CPU “based on the third generation of AMD’s Ryzen line” containing eight cores of the company’s new 7nm Zen 2 micro-architecture.

The custom unit for 3D audio accompanying the AMD chip would make the game’s sound seem to come from different directions: above; behind; via TV speakers or headphones, and would represent a significant improvement in the audio experience.

“It’s been a little bit of frustration that audio did not change too much between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4,” Cerny said.

“With the next console, the dream is to show how dramatically different the audio experience can be when we apply significant amounts of hardware horsepower to it.”

With PS 5, Sony would also be delivering previously unattainable graphical fidelity and visual effects.

Backward compatibility with PS 4 games would also be made possible unlike PS 3 to PS 4 transition while existing PSVR headset will continue to work with PS 5.

Keeping back details on PS 5’s games and media features, Cerny said the upgrade isn’t tantamount to adding extra layers to features that yielded previous gaming experiences but “allows for fundamental changes in what a game can be”.

Although he revealed that the next generation PlayStation console is well on its way with its game-changing ray-tracing support, more immersive audio and graphics improvement and load time-killing SSD, the upgrade is not to be expected anytime soon—at least not in 2019.