I'm sure it won't come as much of a surprise to anyone that the upcoming PlayStation 5 is going to more powerful than the PlayStation 4. It'd be a pretty naff successor if it wasn't a superior bit of kit, right? But according to a recent corporate strategy meeting held by Sony, the next-gen PlayStation will be approximately 100 times faster than its predecessor. That's... that's pretty damn fast.
This revelation comes from an official Sony document, which boasts that the PlayStation 5 will "revolutionize the game experience for users".
One of the ways in which the company intends to do that is by making the PS5 unbelievably fast. Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida said that the console's custom-built SSD (solid state drive) will enable processing speeds that are up to 100 times faster than those seen on PlayStation 4.
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"In order to further enhance the sense of immersion in games, we expect to improve not just the resolution, but the speed of games," the document reads.
"For example, through a custom‐designed high‐speed SSD, we plan to realize game data
processing speeds that are approximately 100 times faster than PS4. Game load times should be much shorter, and players should be able to move through immense
game worlds in almost an instant."
Obviously this sounds impressive enough on its own, but the actual implications of these superior processing speeds are far more thrilling. The key takeaway here is that loading times will be far, far shorter than ever before, allowing players to move through large open worlds and environments with minimal fuss.
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But it goes deeper than that. Faster processing speeds and reduced load times have more than a few advantages for developers, too. Specifically, they'll be able to build bigger and far more detailed environments than the PS4 could ever have mustered. A lot of studios have been talking up the vast potential of the PS5 SSD for a while now, but it wasn't until Epic Games unveiled the real-time tech demo for Unreal Engine 5 that we finally got a taste of what the console can really do.
Not long after Unreal Engine 5 presentation, Epic CEO and founder Tim Sweeney had a lot of good things to say about Sony's upcoming console. He even suggested that the SSD Sony is using is way ahead of a lot high-end PCs, which are typically considered the absolute pinnacle of gaming tech.
This all sounds terribly exciting. Now all we really need to know is what the console looks like, what games are coming at launch, and how much exactly this fancy bit of kit will set us back. Luckily, multiple reports have suggested Sony is finally going ahead with the long-rumoured PS5 reveal event in early June. Watch this space.
Featured Image Credit: SonyTopics: PlayStation 5, PS5, PlayStation 4, PS4