First Test: Sony's Future-Proofed PS5
The Takeaway: Unless you have a TV with HDMI 2.1 and variable refresh rate, the graphics boost will be subtle. But the new controller, exclusive library, and modular design make the PS5 more than just a worthy successor to the PS4.
The new DualSense controller is ergonomically excellent, with new functionality.
Launch-day exclusives and compatibility with PS4 titles will fill the space until franchises like Gran Turismo and God of War debut new titles.
The PS5’s performance increases don’t mean hyper-realistic graphics, but load times and rendering are appreciably improved from last-gen consoles.
In the few weeks I’ve been testing the PS5, it has met the high expectations I had for it. The games, the graphics, and especially that controller hit the balance of futuristic and familiar. You’re going to love the PS5. As long as you can find a shelf for it, how could you not?
I think you will. But no one can be certain yet. Because Sony designed the PS5 to thrive and evolve for at least seven years, until the company comes out with the PS6. Playing several pre-release games a few weeks before launch is circling the block with a car that I—and millions of gamers—will be driving for hundreds of thousands of miles.
Even months after these arrive in customers’ homes, it will help to remember that this is the beginning. But if video games are or have ever been a reliable source of joy for you, that beginning is already thrilling.
SPECS
Price: $499 ($399 for PS5 Digital Edition without a disc drive)
Dimensions: 15.4 inches tall, 10.3 inches deep, 4.1 inches wide
Graphics: 4K resolution at 60 fps; up to 8K resolution; up to 120 frames per second; ray tracing
Exclusive titles: Spider-Man: Miles Morales; Horizon II: Zero West; Gran Turismo 7; Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
Storage: 825 GB solid state drive (SSD)
CPU: 3.5 GHz AMD Zen 2
GPU: AMD RDNA 2 (10.3 teraflops)
Graphics and Performance
After months of comparing specs and reading expert takes, I realized: Stop sweating the numbers. I/O throughput, SSD speed, 8K support—bigger or smaller don’t mean better, especially if you are, like me, not playing on a brand new top-end TV. Besides, if raw performance were the undisputed priority for most people, we would all would already be playing on a $2,000-plus PC build.
In practice, the PS5’s load times are quick. On my Xbox One X, loading my Witcher 3 save takes over a minute, enough time for a few email replies. With Spider Man: Miles Morales on the PS5, the time from Rest Mode to my last checkpoint was just under 25 seconds. Not mind-blowing, but enough to make a difference for anyone with a narrow window to play.
Once running, games look incredible. In Spider Man, you can see miles of detailed Manhattan skyline. In some scenes, it is difficult to distinguish the cutscene from the start of actual gameplay. But I wasn’t in awe, not the way I was going from PS1 to PS2, or from Standard to High Definition.
Which is completely fine. If we go any further, we’ll start approaching Polar Express levels of eerie realism. Besides, I think most of us would rather see performance bumps manifest in smoother animations and no-lag rendering. Besides, great games don’t need realism—take Among Us, Minecraft, Animal Crossing.
As more titles come out, we will see developers wring more out of the PS5’s hardware. But for now, the console’s performance shines when you can go from booting up to actually playing. Quick sessions during a work-from-home lunch break are easier because of what Sony has done with its hardware.
An Evolved Controller
The joysticks’ placement, the buttons’ feel—everything that has made PlayStation controllers fantastic is present in the DualSense. After months of using the excellent (and $180) Xbox Elite Series 2, the DualSense felt more comfortable. For longer fingers, like mine, the extended handles are a big help.
The DualSense’s triggers add a feedback variable. While most controllers just vibrate to tell you that you’re taking damage, the DualSense’s shoulder buttons use coil actuators to adjust their resistance. In Astro’s Playroom, for example, when you become a spring, you can feel the tension increasing or decreasing in your index fingers.
In my testing, the effect wasn’t as magical as it was for other reviewers. But the most compelling use cases for this function are coming. One is Deathloop, which can block the trigger when your gun jams. But even without that feature, the DualSense feels right, and Sony was correct to focus its efforts on getting the most important component correct.
Exclusive Games
PlayStations have always has exclusive collections of masterpieces, but that advantage is not as obvious with the PS5. Now, major franchises like Yakuza have expanded beyond Sony to Xbox and PC. And cross-platform must-play games like Call of Duty and Cyberpunk are still being released on last-gen consoles. Microsoft recently bought developer Bethesda Softworks, which could mean preferential treatment on Xbox for franchises like Doom, Fallout, and The Elder Scrolls. Even without Bethesda, the PS5 can’t match the Xbox Series X’s huge archive, which lets you play games going back to the early 2000s.
But for someone like me, who doesn’t want to play classic games, and who missed plenty of PS4 hits, there are still too many great titles to play between launch day and whenever the next Gran Turismo and God of War arrive. Besides launch titles like Godfall and Demon’s Souls, I plan to pay $10 a month for PlayStation Plus, which gets you 20 excellent PS4 titles such as Bloodborne, Persona 5, Uncharted 4. And some games, like Ghosts of Tsushima and the previous God of War, will get graphics boosts, so they can run at 60 frames per second.
Those titles, plus the multi-platform essentials like Cyberpunk and Call of Duty, make it so the PS5 can be your only console. If I can convince my Warzone friends to jump from Xbox to PlayStation—cross-platform multiplayer options are still limited—I can’t conceive of a release omitting the PS5 that could make me regret choosing Sony.
Upgrades and Longevity
The PS4 came out in November 2013. The PS3, November 2006. It’s going to be seven years until the next PlayStation drops. That’s a hell of a long time for a piece of consumer tech to not just last, but remain relevant.
Sony has a plan for that. As VP of Mechanical Design Yasuhiro Ootori demonstrated in a teardown video (there aren’t enough manufacturer-sanctioned teardowns), you can snap off the PS5’s exterior panels. Modifications, like adding another SSD, are not only allowed but encouraged. Yes, you can add external storage to an Xbox by plugging in a hard drive or a terabyte expansion card. But for anyone who likes the tactility of disassembly, the PS5’s engineers get serious points for actually encouraging customers to open the thing. In the era of don’t-void-the-warranty, I appreciate Sony’s stance.
Unfortunately, you will probably want to add more storage, whether you like tinkering or not. Between Modern Warfare (108.5 GB), The Last of Us remastered (38.6 GB), God of War (45.6 GB), and basic operating data (55.5 GB), it’s easy to hit its 825 GB limit. At the worst, this means paring down your collection, and giving yourself a couple of hours’ notice (depending on your home internet speed) before playing something you don’t have downloaded.
Sony’s Design Difference
If you buy an Xbox Series X or S, you are paying for an enormous video game library, especially if you buy Game Pass Ultimate. If you, for some reason, buy a Google Stadia, you are experimenting with the first era of streaming. If you buy a PS5, you are betting on strengths that Sony has spent decades proving to possess: industry-top performance, exclusive games, and a backend infrastructure to run it all.
But with the PS5 Sony has also shown hints of Nintendo- or even Apple-grade consideration for user experience and aesthetics. The DualSense’s new motors are a subtle way to add more immersion without interrupting the console format. Looking underneath the PS5’s plastic, even if it’s just to install a new drive, feels pleasantly sacrilegious. And that totemic case. The PS5 had to be that enormous to circulate air and keep itself cool. But Sony didn’t have to make the plastic have those curved wings, or put little circle and square textures on the inside walls.
Sometime between now and the PS6, I will probably build a gaming PC, or maybe buy the Xbox Series X. But I’ll always want to have the PS5, just to see what comes next for it. I expect anyone else who buys one is doing so for the same reasons.
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