The PlayStation 5 will be launched simultaneously around the World during the 2020 holiday season. There’s still a lot to discover
The choice made at the end of 2013 by Sony, when it launched the PlayStation 4 in Europe and the U.S. three months ahead of the launch in Japan (and over a year ahead of the launch in China), will not be replicated in late 2020, at the launch of the PlayStation 5. Launch that, as confirmed by the CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment Jim Ryan in an interview with Business Insider Japan, will be unique throughout the world.
According to Ryan, in fact, that decision was taken for contingent reasons and very special, which do not exist today. So there’s no reason to launch the PS5 at different times in different markets, and the debut will be global, not regional. But that’s not all: the same Ryan adds in the interview that there are still surprises to be revealed about Sony’s new model of gaming console. Finally, Ryan promised that Sony will not forget about the more than 100 million PS4 users in the PS5 launch period. Therefore, new games will arrive even for those who have the current model and pay the subscription to the PlayStation Plus platform.
A really big difference
Of the hardware of the PlayStation 5 we already know something, because Sony itself has revealed it, but not everything. We know that it will have 3D audio, an SSD drive capable of zeroing (or nearly zeroing) game loading times, that the hardware will support ray tracing and Ultra HD Blu-Rays, and that the DualShock 5 controller will have haptic feedback. But Ryan also stated that that’s not all, there’s more and that the PS5 will have at least one feature that will make it different from other consoles. And, Ryan explains, it will be “a really big difference.” Unfortunately, nothing is known about this difference, which could be either in the technical features and hardware of the console, in the way the game is played, or possibly in new types of subscriptions to play online.
New titles for PS4
Then Ryan also talked about the current PS4 users, which amount to over 100 million worldwide. Many of those users are on the PlayStation Plus subscription service, so they deserve respect even in the delicate transition period between PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Those users will continue to receive more titles on and after the launch of PS5, as they will continue to represent the core of the PlayStation ecosystem for a long time to come. Even if the rosiest sales predictions come true, in fact, it will be at least a year before the PS5 has sold enough units to make Sony think about phasing out PS4 users.