Has Sony inadvertently spoiled the PS5 release date?

*** UPDATE 13/5/2020 ***

A route accident, a failure to communicate between departments or a spoiler on the PS5 release date? These options may all be true after an open Sony Interactive Entertainment Japan job position regarding the planning, development and sales of the new Sony console was released online. The job description clearly states that "it will be released in October 2020" and Nibel's tweet triggered the gamers.

Compromised the summer window to launch the PS5, Sony has historically always launched its flagship products in November. The pandemic does not seem to have slowed the assembly line so overwhelmingly, but certainly launching a product so requested at this particular historical moment would compromise distribution. Specialized magazines immediately moved to understand what was going on. The first to move is Famitsū, one of the most important specialized magazines in Japan. The response that came from Sony was categorical: "was due to a mistake in the recruitment site, not the content that was written by our company". The denial could only come, but we are now used to Sony's twists, especially when the best-selling console in history is at stake.

19/3/2020 | Yesterday Mark Cerny presented the PS5, the new Sony console. The Lead System Architect held an extremely sober conference, also and above all because of the type of subject that was going to be treated. Unlike Microsoft, which has already presented the user side features of the new Xbox Series X to the world, Sony preferred to reveal the technical features of the new gaming platform first. After the 50-minute presentation and which many have called "soporific" because of the constant tone maintained all the time by Cerny, the PS5 presents itself to the world with some very interesting structural innovations.

John Linneman of Digital Foundry, one of the most updated networks in terms of consoles, launched a survey via Twitter to understand who the gamer world was with after the launch of the PS5. The results at the time of writing this article say that 48.5% of the nearly 9,000 voters believe that Xbox Series X is ahead of Sony's new console, while only 10.8% say otherwise - a romantic and nostalgic 23.5% yes ranks in favor of the Sega Mega Drive.

However, what is worth highlighting is the difference in information that is now available. While Microsoft has already revealed all the news in a presentation aimed at users, going into the details of what it will allow to do in an excellent strictly as a player, Sony has kept on the technician and has not yet revealed some of the most significant secrets. The information regarding the more technological aspects suggests a console with absurd performances, even without a presentation with a "wow" effect. But what do we know after yesterday of the new PS5?

An incredibly fast SSD

The improved processor is one of the things Sony is aiming for. With its 8 physical cores and 16 threads, it is able to work up to 3.5 Ghz clock, with a variable frequency that will depend on the "boost" that will directly operate the system. Unlike Xbox which boasts a 12 TFLOP GPU, PlayStation has only 10,28 TFLOPS available but enough for a processor with those characteristics. The SSD, therefore, is one of the great strengths of the console, which promises practically non-existent loading times. The latter is one of those features that make no difference if announced in a presentation, but in terms of gameplay it could represent a huge advantage. Pirell's memory "power is nothing without control" fits perfectly with these important changes.

New thermal management system

Mark Cerny spent important words on the solutions applied to improve the thermal management of the system. Unlike a PC processor - which triggers throttling when it reaches a certain workload, useful to lower the voltage - the Sony PS5 has kept a fixed power budget and does not work with a constant frequency. The processor power supply therefore remains unchanged as the frequency changes and varies according to the workload. In more trivial terms, the new thermal management system of the disk will allow the system itself to vary the voltage and avoid significant damage to the processor.

The audio of another dimension

To increase the game experience of the players Sony has designed Tempest Engine, an unpublished audio engine called able to manage audio in a three-dimensional way. Thanks to a Head-related Transfer Function (HRTF), a response curve based on the shape of the gamer's head. In technical terms, Sony has decided to insert a GPU compute unit and transform it into a sort of hardware audio engine for sound management. The Lead System Architect has specified that no dedicated audio systems are needed. All you need will be your ears, headphones and the Tempest Engine will take care of the rest.

The photorealism of the new ray tracing 

Last but not least, the PS5 has updated its latest hardware ray tracing. The system that allows to obtain images indistinguishable from reality is a real time rendering technique that increases the quality of the gaming experience. Sony and Microsoft, in this respect, are equivalent having chosen the same hardware model, using two different names. We are facing improvements over the previous console.

Speaking instead of the PS5 release window, Sony remains with its release scheduled for the autumn of 2020. There are no official dates yet, but it is already important for gamers not to see a date slip even if still far away. In fact, BAAS, the public relations agency representing Sony Interactive Entertainment Benelux, told LetsGoDigital that "Coronavirus has not yet delayed the launch of PS5 for the moment." The launch window initially planned for Sony's new flagship therefore remains unchanged.