Whether you are a hardcore gamer that spends every hour of your day playing games and following the industry, or a more casual fan who sees it as just a relaxing pastime, you have probably been following the news from next generation consoles. With the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X launching this holiday season, news is coming out, and rumors are circulating; however, not all of it is positive.
While we’ve seen virtually everything that Microsoft has to offer aside from pricing and a concrete release date, we’ve also seen virtually nothing about the PlayStation 5. Since the Series X was unveiled at the Game Awards in December of last year, all we know about the PS5 is what the controller looks like and that the console is less powerful than its competitor. So after the golden age Sony experienced with the PS4, why all the confusion, and why do they not appear confident in their device? Well, I have a couple theories.
First of all, the sheer lack of information is the most concerning bit. If you recall back in 2013 when Sony was showing off the PS4, they came out swinging when they saw the opportunity. After the dumpster fire that was the Xbox One reveal event, Sony held absolutely nothing back, and appeared indestructible. Not only that, but they acted comparably bold during the PS1 and PS2 eras; and great success followed. We’ve seen Sony at their best, and I certainly know their pride when I see it.
If I have anything to say about the optics Sony is putting out about the PS5, it would be that it appears extremely self conscious. In the last six months, Microsoft has been extremely forthcoming about their confidence in the power and accessibility of the Series X, something that reminds me very much of Sony in the last console generation. If there wasn’t something going on behind the scenes, I am sure Sony would be singing a different tune, and this is most apparent in their PS5 presentation held by the lead system architect, Mark Cerny.
Although many wanted this event to be a reveal of sorts of the hardware akin to the Series X reveal, that was not the case. Cerny went on to explain his philosophy when designing the system, such as the benefit of having a high speed SSD, high definition audio and hardware accelerated ray tracing. All of this sounded terrific, but no gameplay or live hardware demonstration was shown. I believe in the technical prowess and brilliancy of Cerny and his team, but this felt like something that should come after a hardware reveal. That way, the more casual fans are satisfied, and the more technical fans can be happy knowing the context of this in-depth information.
In addition, there are many things rumored behind the scenes that do not bode well for the system’s state. Jeff Rickel on Twitter reported that Sony is having issues with the PS5’s performance. He has heard from his sources that Sony is experiencing difficulties with maintaining high GPU clock speeds (which are a bit lower than the Series X) and that the consoles are overheating at an alarming rate. Rickel tells us that the company is even considering a console redesign -and therefore a potential delay- in hopes that they can lower the failure rate. Whether or not this report is true is up to you, but it seems to me to be a plausible reason as to why we have not seen the box yet. If Sony had something they were proud of, I don’t see why they haven’t shown us anything if there isn’t anything to hide.
All of this could just be false conjecture, but I cannot help but think that there is something wrong with the PlayStation 5. While the future is not set in stone, I would still encourage people to keep an eye out and be hopeful for the future.
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