PlayStation fans are waiting for Sony to finally showcase its next-gen console and visually stunning selection of new PS5 games. Unfortunately, however, it looks like we might be forced to wait until early 2020 to hear more about the PS5, which has been ruled out of Sony’s imminent State of Play presentation. On the plus side, Sony has revealed an interesting tidbit about the next-gen PlayStation ahead of next year’s release date. And it’s good news for potential PS5 customers, because the new console could work out costing less than expected.
In a new post on the PlayStation Blog, Sony executive Jim Ryan pledged to lower the company’s carbon footprint going forward.
Not only is this good news for the planet, but it means customers will pay less on their energy bills when the PS5 is released.
“At SIE, we have made substantial commitments and efforts to reduce the power consumption of the PS4 by utilising efficient technologies such as System-on-a-Chip architecture integrating a high-performance graphics processor, die shrink, power scaling, as well as energy saving modes such as Suspend-to-RAM.
“For context, we estimate the carbon emissions we have avoided to date already amount to almost 16 million metric tons, increasing to 29 million metric tons over the course of the next 10 years (which equals the CO2 emissions for the nation of Denmark in 2017).
“I am also very pleased to announce the next generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4 (which we estimate can be achieved at around 0.5 W).
“If just one million users enable this feature, it would save equivalent to the average electricity use of 1,000 US homes.”
Sony’s pledge to lower its carbon footprint will extend to its data centres and could also be the subject of future PSVR applications.
“From an operations point of view, we will complete a carbon footprint assessment of our gaming services and will report the energy efficiency measures we employ at our data centers,” Ryan continues. “We are committed to informing consumers of energy efficient console set-up and use.
“Our commitments are not only related to hardware and operations, we are also keen to help inform people interested in sustainability goals.
“We have committed to working with the industry and climate experts to develop reference information for use by game developers that wish to include sustainability themes in games. In addition, we will investigate potential PS VR applications that can raise awareness of climate issues and climate experts.”
Based on the early specs, Sony will have a tough time reducing the power consumption of the PS5.
The next-gen console will support 8K resolution, ray-tracing technology and have much faster loading times.
The speedy (or non-existent) loading times are possible thanks to the specialised solid-state drive, which will make a huge difference to processing speeds.
In Spider-Man on a PS4 Pro, for example, it can take upwards of 15 seconds to fast travel from one location to another. The PS5, on the other hand, will be able to handle the same task in less than a second.
Worlds can also be rendered at far greater speeds, which should inject more pace into games.
While we won’t find out any more information about the PS5 in today’s State of Play, one game tipped to launch with the console is a sequel to PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
According to a recent post on Reddit, the sequel will be titled PlayStation All-stars Arena.
Arena will reportedly be a 3D brawler developed in partnership with Capcom. It’s said to be a mixture of Dissidia and Power Stone with a target lock button, cel-shaded visuals and cartoonish environments.
Fans will allegedly be able to pick up a full-featured launch edition, or a free-to-play edition with a rotating roster of characters – similar to Killer Instinct on Xbox One.