PlayStation 5 will launch by Christmas 2020

Sony have confirmed that the PlayStation 5, officially the consoles name, will be launching late 2020... Basically around Christmas time. The news came in the official PlayStation blog where they revealed some extra details about the new controller, which the blog post says, is designed to deepen the feeling of immersion when you play games.

The first reveal is the addition of haptic feedback instead of the existing "rumble" technology, this should give players a range of feedback based on the game they are playing and offers a wider range of sensations when, for example crashing into a wall in a car compared with being tacked in a football game.

The second is soemthing they are calling adaptive triggers, which as the blog post says "[Allows] developers to 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."

Further information on the PlayStation 5 comes via an interview on Wired with Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan and System Architect Mark Cerny. In the interview they confirm a number of things such as hardware level ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU and the use of an optical drive that doubles as a 4K Blu-ray player for physical games - game installation is madatory though - but you can choose what part of the game to install, such as the multiplayer part if you only want to MP, or the single player campaign if MP is not your thing.

The PS5 also introduces a revamped UI, which will offer real-time data on the game directly, including what missions are available and what rewards you might receive for completing them. Multiplayer servers will also reveal in the UI real-time match data so direct from the UI players will know what is available to them without having to boot a game.

There is much more to be revealed, obviously at this early stage many things such as the SSD capacity, exact design of the console and controller and internal specs are still up in the air, but at least we know how long we have to wait for the next gen of consoles.