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Sony lifted the veil on its new PlayStation but sadly it’s not launching this year

Ray tracing and a built-in SSD, I’m all for it.

Sony playstation next gen
Image: VideoBlocks

If you’re a gamer and, heck, even if you aren’t, you know that every handful of years the next gaming hotness is scheduled to be released. These next-gen consoles typically promise better graphics, improved gameplay, and a variety of other features to convince you that it’s time to upgrade your system to the next (pun very much intended) game-changing device.

We’ve known Sony is working on a new PlayStation console for some time now, but a new report from Wired this morning gives us an unparalleled look at the upcoming console and it looks like it could be a real winner. Sadly, there are still no release dates available.

The unnamed upcoming Sony console will sport a ray tracing capable GPU

There’s a lot to be excited about for the future of gaming, but obviously, one of the most obvious things is the increased graphic capabilities that come with new consoles. The new PlayStation console will feature a third-generation Ryzen CPU and a custom GPU that is based around Radeon’s Navi family.

What this means for you is better graphics (obvs) as well as the coveted ray tracing. Ray tracing is basically a fancy term for the fancy process of creating dynamic lighting in games and movies. Lighting that can react and interact in a 3D world. Mark Cerny, the lead system architect for the new PlayStation, states that the same tech can be used to improve the sound, something that did not evolve as well as he’d have hoped from the PlayStation 3 to the PlayStation 4.

If you wanted to run tests to see if the player can hear certain audio sources or if the enemies can hear the players’ footsteps, ray tracing is useful for that. It’s all the same thing as taking a ray through the environment.

The new PlayStation will feature an SSD that will help with the growing size of games

So, by now, you’re probably aware that game file sizes are huge when it comes to big titles. It’s a given, there’s a lot there, but our meager hard drives feel the weight of these games in both size requirements and load times, and with the upcoming PlayStation 5 supporting 8K, it will need all the help it can get.

The upcoming PlayStation console hopes to alleviate those issues in a big way with an onboard SSD. No word on the size of the SSD at this point, but Cerny did shed some light on the speeds that are capable with the SSD tech. Using Spider-Man on the PlayStation 4 Pro as an example, he showed a load time of 15 seconds when fast-traveling from one place on the map to another. He then demonstrates the same action on the new PlayStation. That load time? A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it time of only 0.8 seconds.

These types of load speeds can also influence how fast your game plays, with literal speed limitations in place to make sure the game can handle the processing to display everything correctly. Using Spider-Man as an example again, Cerny shows that your character is limited to how fast it can move due to this limitations, on the new PlayStation those limitations were easily surpassed, which gave Spider-Man new levels of speed to zip around buildings.

Those are the main takeaways, but it should be noted that the new PlayStation is built on existing PS4 architecture

What does this mean for gamers? It means backward compatibility and games being released on both platforms. Another thing to note is that, according to Cerny, Sony has big plans for the PlayStation VR headset with the next-gen console, but wouldn’t come up off any more information than that.

I guess we’ll just have to wait for the next round of leaks.

What do you think? Excited for the prospect of a new PlayStation console? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Former KnowTechie editor.

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