Daniel Rotar

July 31, 2020

PS5 – Major Controller Updates, Pre-Orders, Price & More!

Daniel Rotar

July 31, 2020

We’ve had some major PS5 updates over the past week, ranging from the first hands-on video with the DualSense Controller, to Pre-Order Updates, Performance Updates, Games, Graphics and so much more. So, get those snacks ready and here’s everything new in terms of the PS5!

Pre-Orders

First things first, there were a ton of rumors that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start as soon as possible. These were mostly coming from Twitter leaker ‘IronManPS5’, previously known as ‘PSERebus’, who’s actually been very accurate in the past. He started tweeting that the PS5 Pre-Orders would start on Monday, 13th July. This, unfortunately, did not happen.

We then heard the news that the PS5 Controller would get a hands-on look on Friday, 17th July, and that that would also be when the Pre-Orders would start. That did not happen either. But luckily, in that hands-on video/interview that Geoff Keighley had with Eric Lempel, the Global Head Marketing of PlayStation, Eric debunked those Pre-Order rumors as false. He said that Sony will let their customers know, ahead of time, when the Pre-Orders would start. They wouldn’t just start out of the blue and catch everyone by surprise, which is the good news.

A more strict & direct approach from Sony, with the Pre-Orders.

The bad news, or maybe this is actually good news as well, is that we now have confirmation that you would only be allowed to buy one PS5 per household as the stock would be quite low at launch. This was found by a Reddit user who was browsing the web page source code on ‘direct.playstation.com'. It seems that when you’ll try to add another PS5, you’ll get an error message saying that you can only purchase one Console. Now, in that code, it is revealed that Sony will also be adding labels on certain PS4 products that would be PS5 compatible, this includes Games and likely some PS4 Accessories as well.

Speaking of Labels, we actually got to see the PS5 label that would be on Game Cases, the top left label that we’ve had on PS4 & PS3 Game-Cases and so on. For the first time, with the PS5, the Label is black & white, so no more Blue PS5 Logo or anything like that. Sony seems to have fully embraced the white & black colour scheme that they’ve introduced on the PS5 Console and the PS5 Controller. I do love the minimalist look they’ve gone for.

Finally, seen as how we’re talking about Pre-Orders and Boxes, both Nikkei and Bloomberg report that Sony is increasing the PlayStation 5 manufacturing by around 50% with aims of reaching 10 million units by the end of 2020. Just to give you guys an idea, the PS4 sold 4.2 million units in 2013. The PS4 was released on November the 15th, which is around the same rumoured released date that the PS5 is said to come out.

The Gaming Community has increased significantly since 2013 and considering the price of the PS5, I do expect loads of users wanting to upgrade to the new Console. I don’t see twice the number of units sold as launch, compared to the PS4, I think that’s a bit too optimistic. But, if Sony manages to manufacture 10 million units of the PS5, that would solve the entire stock issue at launch.

Price

Now, let’s talk about the price, ‘IronManPS5’ tweeted the full prices for not just the PS5 itself, but also the prices for the Accessories. Even though he was wrong in terms of the Pre-Orders, he was right in the past, numerous times. So, even if his price leaks are not 100% correct, they should at least be very close to the final retail prices.

He says that the PS5 will cost $500, €500 or £450 in the UK. The PS4 Pro was priced at $400, the PS4 was also priced at $400, whereas the PS3 was priced at $500. This might seem like a lot, But do keep in mind that unlike a Smartphone, which can cost way over $1,000 and only used for two years or so, you would actually end up using a Console for a lot longer. This will probably be around five years or even more, which means that the $500 would be split into something like $100 a year, compared to $500 a year, which is what a high-end Smartphone would cost you.

The Digital Only PS5 may only come in at £350.

This $500 is just for the regular PS5, here will also be a ‘disk-less’ / Digital Only version of the PS5, which is said to cost $400, €400 or £350, the same price as the PS4. The only reason why you would get the more expensive PS5 is if you have any disk-based PS4 Games that you still want to play on the PS5. I do have a few disk Games, but I bought all of those when the PS4 came out, then I started moving towards Digital Games. Those old games that I got on disk can always just be bought again from the PlayStation Store as they’ve gotten so inexpensive now. I personally think that I would be going with the Digital Only version, especially since I really do prefer the way it looks.

The DualSense Controller is said to be $60, €60 or £55. The Charging Station for these Controller, which can charge two of them at the same time, that’s said to cost $30, €30 or £25. The PS5 Media Remote will also have the same price. The PS5 HD Camera is said to cost $60, €60 or £55 and finally, the Pulse 3D Wireless Headset will apparently cost $160, €180 or £130. I would say that these are some very good prices, for both the Consoles and the Accessories.

Controller Update

Now it’s time for the big one, the Controller.

As I mentioned before, Geoff Keighley, who’s pretty well known in the Gaming Industry, was the very first person outside of Sony themselves and the Developers, who has laid his hands on the PS5 Controller. The first thing I took from the full video and interview with PlayStation’s Eric Lempel, was the actual size of the Controller.

We’ve seen some alleged leaked images of the DualSense, where it looked gigantic, but now Geoff has showed us a side-by-side image against the PS4’s DualShock Controller. While the DualSense is indeed larger than the DualShock 4, it is not significantly larger. Realistically, the size and the weight should in fact make it more comfortable than the DualShock 4 was, at least this is what Sony is saying.

The first ‘hands-on’ clip with the DualSense revealed it’s not quite as unwieldy as we may have first thought.

We also got to see the bottom of the Controller for the very first time, which was something that for some strange reason, Sony has avoided showing. This made me think that maybe it was because Sony added two customisable Buttons there, just like the Back-Button Attachment on the DualShock 4. But now that we finally got to see the bottom of it, there are no Buttons at all, just a sticker.

Geoff also mentioned that the Speaker on the DualSense had a wider range of sound, compared to the DualShock 4 Speaker and also the fact that the Controller had a nice hefty weight to it. The game that he got to test was Astro’s Playroom, which is a spin-off from the PSVR’s highly praised AstroBot VR game, just in non-VR this time. The game lets you fully explore the functionality of the Controller, test out the Haptic Feedback, the Touchpad, the Adaptive Triggers and so on. He mentioned how cool the Triggers felt now that the Game Developers could actually implement different levels of pressure in them so that when you draw a Bow, it would feel entirely different from when you would fire a Gun. I can’t wait to try this.

I was expecting Geoff to be blown away by the Haptics or at least talk more about them. He did mention how realistic the game feels but I was just expecting him to praise the Haptic Touch a bit more.

Speaking of Astro, I’m assuming that Geoff was indeed playing this on a PS5 unit, which means that he also got to experience the PS5 to some extent but he didn’t talk about that at all here. However, Eric, PlayStation’s Global Head of Marketing, did talk a bit about the PS5 itself. Aside from the Pre-Order news that I mentioned before, he did talk about how Sony believes in Console Generations and Console Exclusives.

Games

This was in contrast to Microsoft, who will be enforcing Cross-Generation Compatibility for Games. So, any Games developed for the Xbox Series X, at least for the next two years, will also need to run on the Xbox One X as well as the Xbox One. I’ll talk about this more, in a separate video, so do Subscribe and enable Notifications for that.

But until then, Eric made a good point here, saying that Games such as ‘Ratchet & Clank – Rift Apart’, would not even be technically possible on previous Consoles at all. This is because in this game, which is a PS5 Exclusive, you can instantly travel through different dimensions and take the fights from one dimension to another, which is only achievable thanks to the PS5’s insanely fast SSD, which is more than 100 times faster than the PS4’s Hard-Drive. Making this game run on the PS4 would involve changing the Gameplay and the Story of the Game.

‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ was not fully developed on the PS5, which may explain some of the apparent compromises (Credit: PlayStation).

Not only that, but if you make the game for the PS4 first, which you would do in a down-up development cycle and is how most Games are made, you would not be able to implement such ground breaking features. Again, more about this in a separate video, but Eric does have a very good point. This is why the next PlayStation exclusive games to launch, such as ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’, ‘Ratchet & Clank - Rift Apart’, ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ and many more will only run on the PS5.

Speaking of Games, Insomniac games have confirmed that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ would run at 60FPS on the PS5, sort of. They said that you would get to choose between a 4K Mode and a Performance Mode with 60FPS.

So, here’s the thing, we were all hoping that this Console generation would finally be a 60FPS generation. Microsoft have already confirmed that their standard would be 60FPS for Games and even 120FPS in some cases. We’ve seen some rumors that Sony was planning to do the same in all of the Games to be released for the PS5. However, judging by what Insomniac has said, it seems like while you can indeed play Spider-Man Miles Morales in 60FPS, you would have to downgrade a few graphical settings and apparently, the Resolution too.

Now, we don’t really know what these downgrades would be as of yet, but I would say that in the best case scenario, we can turn off Ray-Tracing to enable 60FPS. In the worst case scenario, not only will Ray-Tracing be disabled for 60FPS, but the Resolution would also be dropped to 1440p, or even 1080p, and then dynamically upscaled to 4K. Judging from Insomniac’s message, it is looking quite likely that we will have some drop in Resolution as well.

Now, the good news is that ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ wasn’t fully developed on the PS5. It’s still using the same engine as the 2018 ‘Spider-Man’, just modified to take better advantage of the PS5. It will be only when games such as ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’ or the next ‘God of War’ come out, games which have been fully developed on the PS5 from scratch, that we might see 60FPS as a default on the highest possible settings.

For a start, it seems that Sony would be focusing on the highest possible Graphics first, and then the Frame-Rate. To be honest, even-though I’m personally disappointed in this decision, games such as ‘Last of Us: Part 2’ look absolutely breath-taking on the PS4 Pro, it honestly looked as if I was playing a PS5 game, it looked that good. So, I cannot wait to see what Sony has in store next.

If you look closely, you can still see a little bit of blue on the left-hand image (Credit: PlayStation Lifestyle).

Speaking of that, we actually had a recent leak from what seems to be a retailer that was listing a few Sony products. One of those products is a Black PS5 and a Black Controller with both having a red LED light, as opposed to the standard blue LED light that the White PS5 has. Now, we have heard many rumors that Sony is indeed working on different colour schemes for the PS5, one of them being black, so this could indeed be the real thing. I would expect Sony to give us an update on the colours as the pre-orders open.

Personally, I do think that this image is fake. It does look very photoshopped, not even to mention errors such as the back of the Controller still being white, or the red light still having a blue glow on the Console. This is definitely fake. Regardless of that being fake, we’ve actually modelled our very own concept of the PS5, in black, and I’m definitely team Matte Black. I would definitely go for this option, should Sony give us the option at launch.

You can of course change the colour of the LED bar on the PS4, kind of. This was done by the system itself, based on the games. I’m hoping that with the PS5, we would also have the option to have custom colours, that would be quite cool!

Daniel Rotar

June 19, 2020

Leaks & Rumors

PS5 (2020) - Everything You Need to Know!

Daniel Rotar

June 19, 2020

Leaks & Rumors

So, just like that, Sony has showed us the actual design of the PS5, alongside a ton of games. Now that we know what it will look like, what games it will play and how well it would run those games, here are my thoughts on the PS5. This will be covering everything that Sony has talked about so far and why I’m really looking forward to the PS5.

Grab some snacks, and enjoy!

PS5 Design

Number one probably sounds a bit lame because it is really the least important part of a Games Console, which is the Design.

Sony has had two major PS5 events, the first one being in March where Mark Cerny, the PS5’s Lead System Architect, talked about the specs and how the entire system was built. The second big event was just last week, when Sony revealed the full design of the PS5.

We’ve made a number of concepts of how we imagined the PS5 would look. We were also the first ones in the world to reveal an actual photo of the PS5’s DevKit, back in October 2019. I know that there are already a bunch of memes floating around but, I actually really like this Design. It kind of reminds me of Eve, from Wall-E. It’s got that very futuristic and minimalistic look to it, with that Glossy Black middle and then the two Matte White slabs surrounding it. You might remember me saying that the Panda Pixel 2 XL was my favourite colour scheme on any Smartphone and this is pretty much the same. You could say it’s the Playstation 5: Storm-Trooper Edition, I love it!

Compared to the Xbox Series X, the Xbox has a more mature and classic look, which some may prefer. I like both actually, but I just think that the PS5 would look a bit more interesting and futuristic in my Living-Room, whilst the Xbox would just blend in better. Also, a few people have calculated the actual size of the PS5, based on the Disk-Drive size and the USB Port, and it turns out that it’s actually massive. It dwarfs the PS4 Pro, the Xbox One X and even the Xbox Series X. This makes it, I believe, the tallest Games Console ever made.

This is how the PS5 stacks up to its predecessors & main competitor (Credit: The Verge).

Now, the Xbox is more of like a box, so it is fatter than the PS5, which is tall and thin. The good news is that you can indeed use the PS5 on its side as well, which would make it look even weirder. In a way it kind of resembles our latest concept, on its side. But you can use it in any Orientation that you wish, just like you can with the Xbox.

Something that I was really not expecting to see with the PS5, is more than one model. We’ve heard the rumors that Microsoft is planning at least two models of the Xbox Series X, with Lockhart and Scarlett, but unlike the Xbox, the PS5 will have two models that would have identical performance between them. The only difference is that the less expensive one does not have a Blu-Ray Drive in it, which in my opinion also makes it look so much better and so much more uniform.

Here’s something that I want to clarify, just because of how insanely fast that SSD is, you would not be playing any games from the Disk Drive. They would just be there for the sake of you not having to download the actual games. In some cases, maybe Game Developers would store some game assets there, but I don’t even see that being the case as the speed of the Blu-Ray Disk Drive is 27MB/s, compared to the 9000MB/s or so that the SSD inside the PS5 is said to be. So, in this case, the only reason why anyone should get the disk-version of the PS5 is if you really want to play your old PS4 games and you have those games on disk. That’s literally the only reason.

Now, just a few more things that I want to cover here. I do love the blue LED light-strip that Sony has added towards the top of the PS5, I think it looks gorgeous and we can also see the Ports now. It seems like on the front we get a USB A and a USB C Port, alongside what looks to be two physical Buttons, likely the Power Button and the Disk-Eject Button, on the model that has a Disk Drive. The other one seems to be lacking this second Button. Unfortunately, Sony hasn’t showed us any photos of the sides or the back, so we don’t know what Ports we’ll have there, but at least when it comes to the front, easily accessible Ports, both USB C and USB A are there.

Sony has also released a teaser trailer of the PS5’s UI and they said that it will be completely re-imagined and that no single Pixel will be left untouched. I really do hope that they don’t change it too much as the PS4’s UI was already regarded as the very best. It was easy to navigate and very easy to understand. I just hope that they don’t ruin that for the sake of redesigning it.

Controller

The second thing that I’m really looking forward to, is the brand new Controller.

You see, rather than Sony calling this the DualShock 5, they decided to go for a brand new name, the DualSense. There’s actually a very good reason for this name. The main feature of this new Controller, aside from the new Design that I’ll cover in just a minute, is that it has a full Haptic Engine built into it.

We can’t wait to get our hands on this… literally (Credit: PlayStation)

On high-end Smartphones, like the iPhone 11, Pixel 4, Galaxy S20’s and many more, you get a Haptic Engine which gives you the impression that the Buttons that you see on the screen are actual physical Buttons that you can actually feel. The new DualSense controller now does just that. It can apparently mimic the feel of sand, grass, water, dirt and more, immersing you so much more into the game. The Haptic Engine on Smartphones today are already incredible, so having an even better Haptic Engine in a device such as a game Controller should definitely be game-changing.

Sony also added Adaptive Triggers to this Controller, meaning that the Triggers would provide you with a different level of resistance based on what you’re doing in a game. This way, weapons in Modern Warfare for example, would actually feel very different and in combination with the Haptic Engine, they should feel closer to firing a real weapon.

We also have a USB C Port, which not only means that you can use any charger to charge this Controller, but you’ll also be able to use an external Battery Bank. We now have a built-in Microphone, so that you can chat with your friends without the need to plug in Headphones, which of course can still be plugged in using the dedicated 3.5mm Headphone Jack. We still have a built-in Speaker as well. We also have a brand new Magnetic Connector for adding Accessories, possibly that Back Button Attachment, which should be launching at some point.

Finally, there’s the Touchpad in the middle, pretty much the same Buttons as before, just renamed, and then the dual-tone black and white design, which resembles the Design of the actual PS5 Console.

Accessories

The next thing that I’m really looking forward to, are the Accessories.

Aside from the Console and the Controller, Sony has also teased a few of the Accessories that you can purchase to go with your PS5. There’s a DualSense Charging Station, which allows you to charge two DualSense Controllers at the same time using that proprietary Magnetic Charging Port on the bottom, so no need to fiddle around with cables.

3D Audio has been something that Sony has mentioned a lot with the PS5, so this headset will be the best way to experience it at launch. (Credit: PlayStation)

We also have a brand new HD Camera, which interestingly enough does have two Camera Modules. This makes me think that this would be used for the PSVR Tracking as well, or at least for some 3D functionality to some extent.

We also have one new Wireless Headset, the Pulse 3D, which would be the best way for you to experience 3D Audio on the PS5. Up until now, Sony has had a few models of their own Playstation Headsets, this time it seems like they only want to have one model, which I’m totally for.

Sony is also adding a new Media Remote as an Accessory, which will allow you to control and use the PS5 just like you would use a Smart TV Box. From the looks of it, it seems that it has four Buttons that look like they can be remapped into possibly any App that you want, such as Netflix, Amazon Prime video and so on.

I’m pretty sure that even more Accessories will be added in the near future. There’s a new PSVR coming out in 2021, which will be a pretty big deal and we’ll likely see more colours of the Controller and possibly even the PS5 itself, not too long into the distant future either.

Specs

Right, now onto the good stuff, the Performance. The PS5 is a gigantic leap in Performance over the PS4 and even the PS4 Pro.

In terms of the CPU, it comes with a Desktop Class AMD Processor, based on the Zen2 Architecture. We have an Eight-Core CPU at 3.5GHz, which is just light-years more powerful than the old Jaguar Architecture that we got in the PS4.

With the GPU, we get AMD’s brand new Navi 2 Architecture, which isn’t even out for PC at the moment. The GPU offers 10.28 TFLOPS in GPU Compute Power, making it 5.58 times more powerful than the PS4’s GPU and 2.44 times more powerful than the PS4 Pro’s GPU. If those numbers don’t seem high enough, in reality they’re actually even higher as RDNA with ‘X’ amount of TFLOPS is actually significantly more powerful than what it would be on GCN, with that same amount of TFLOPS.

The SSD is sure to be one of the PS5’s biggest advantages over the Xbox Series X, those numbers are just ridiculous. (Credit: PlayStation)

I’m not going to go into a super amount of detail into the specs as I’ve already covered those in a previous video, but what you need to know for now is that the CPU, in combination with the GPU, will give us true 4K gaming at 60FPS with support of up to 120FPS , as well as 8K support too. Not only that, but we’ll get things such as Ray Tracing support for extremely realistic shadows and insanely detailed 8K textures in games that would look like real-life photos. We’re also going to get 3D Audio on a hardware level, which when combined with that new Pulse 3D Headset, should give you the most immersive audio experience in gaming yet.

Epic Games has demoed their brand new Unreal Engine 5, running in real time on the PS5. Here we saw some of the most amazing graphics ever on a Console or even PC. However, this new Unreal Engine 5, which is launching in 2021, will also run on Xbox and PC as well. So, those graphics are coming to the other platforms, not just the PS5.

Performance-wise, the Xbox Series X is superior to the PS5, there’s been quite a few Developers that are currently working on games for both Consoles that have said that. However, the PS5 is much easier to develop games for and also has a much faster SSD with up to 9GB/s Compressed, when compared to 2.4GB/s that the Xbox Series X will have. The PS4 had a HDD with a Transfer Speed of around 50MB/s, so the SSD inside the PS5 is 180 times faster!

This allows for zero loading times in games and more importantly, the ability to change the game’s Design based on the SSD speed entirely. For example, in Spider-Man you have to take the Metro when you’re fast-traveling. On the PS5, that option could be removed entirely and you could also jump inside of buildings instantly, without having to transition to a loading screen just to load the assets. So, this is where the biggest advantages to the PS5 are, the SSD and the Controller.

And of course, there’s the games!

Games

In terms of the games, what you need to know is that all of your PS4 games will work with the PS5. If you do have the ‘Digital Only’ Version of the PS5, you might have to re-purchase the disk games that you had, Sony hasn’t confirmed this but it is very likely that this will be the case. However, if you have the Blu-Ray Disk Drive version of the PS5, you will be able to just slot in a PS4 disk and play it on the PS5.

Now, aside from just playing PS4 games, most of those PS4 games will also run much better as the PS5 will feature a Boost Mode. Essentially, the PS5’s GPU has a PS4 GPU built into it, this is how it can natively run PS4 games. However, it can also increase the clock-speeds of that GPU above of what the PS4 could do, which is what Boost Mode is. This means that you will get higher Frame-Rates as well as increased Resolution for your PS4 games. If Developers also release a patch, we would even get PS5 specific features that would take advantage of that SSD and that extra Performance.

Ok, but what about PS5 exclusive games? Well, unlike Microsoft, who will not have any exclusive games on the Xbox for at least the next two years, Sony will. In fact, most of the games that they have announced are PS5 exclusives and that’s actually a very good thing. It means that they are all fully optimised for the PS5’s hardware, rather than having to make compromises in order to support older systems as well. The first game that they showed was Gran Turismo 7, with full Ray-Tracing support and running in 4K at 60FPS. At least this is what the video itself was encoded at. The graphics looked good but I wouldn’t necessarily say that they looked completely mind blowing. Still, I’m pretty excited to see this game in person.

‘Horizon 2: Forbidden West’ & ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ were a couple of our personal favourites, although GTA V received a less than welcome reception. (Credit: PlayStation)

We then got a preview of the next Ratchet & Clank game, this looked like a Disney film, it looked like true next-gen. The unique thing about this game is that you can jump into a rift and get instantly teleported into a new world, a new dimension, with all assets being loaded instantly. There’s basically no loading time at all. This is why having this game run on the PS4 would be impossible without having to re-design the game-play element of it. The PS4 would not be able to load those assets that quickly.

GTA 5 was also announced and this seems to be a re-master of the PS4 re-master. The trailer has a ton of dislikes and I can definitely see why. This was already going to be supported on the PS5, thanks to Backwards Compatibility. All this is basically just a patch to increase the Resolution and Frame-Rate with a few high Resolution textures being added. However, it seems to be a much smaller change than what the PS4 version was to the PS3, as Rockstar hasn’t really shown us any side by side comparisons. The trailer that they uploaded was in 1080p, so I do understand why these dislikes are here.

There is a new Spider-Man game coming though, this is called ‘Spider-Man: Miles Morales’, which apparently is a standalone game and not an expansion. It is, however, in the same universe as the 2018 Spider-Man game and apparently this is coming out by the end of the year. It will be one of the first games to be released on the PS5. The graphics looked good but again, they didn’t look as good as the Unreal 5 Engine demo, they just looked to be at a higher Resolution with higher textures and effects quality. Also, for some reason, this trailer was in 4K but only at 30FPS, which I really hope isn’t the case for the final game. 60FPS is really the target for this generation of Consoles and if there’s a game that needs 60FPS a lot, that’s definitely Spider-Man.

Finally, the game that wowed me the most was definitely the new Horizon game - ‘Horizon 2: Forbidden West’ and this is where we can see true next-gen graphics on the PS5. It’s a pretty big leap over the already incredible looking Horizon Zero Dawn, but unfortunately we do not have a release date for that just yet.

Of course, these are just the very first games of this generation. Future games will utilise the hardware even better and they will deliver some even more outstanding graphics, these are very likely to include: GTA 6, Spider-Man 2, the next God of War and so on.

Daniel Rotar

May 15, 2020

Leaks & Rumors

PS5 (2020) DualSense Controller - This Will Change Everything!

Daniel Rotar

May 15, 2020

Leaks & Rumors

Sony has introduced their brand new PlayStation 5 Controller. However, it’s not actually called the DualShock 5, like we all expected, but instead it is called… the DualSense.

We got hundreds of requests to make a video covering it. So, here are not just my thoughts on the PS5 controller, but also how it compares against all the previous Controllers that Sony has ever released. Without any further ado, here is the history of the PlayStation Controller.

PlayStation 1 Controller

Originally released back in 1994, the Playstation 1 Controller was the very first Gamepad that Sony ever released and they bundled this with the original PlayStation.

Something about this just doesn’t look right.

It was based on the Nintendo Super NES Controller’s design, featuring four Directional Buttons as well as four Action Buttons, but instead of Sony using letters for their Action Buttons, they decided to use shapes. The ‘X’ would represent a ‘Yes’, the ‘O’ would represent a ‘No’, The ‘Square’ would represent a sheet of paper and was originally designed for being the Info Button in games, and the ‘Triangle’ represented the Point of View (or Dialogue) Button. However, unlike Nintendo’s Super NES Controller, Sony decided to add a second pair of Shoulder Buttons (L1, L2, R1 & R2). Fun fact, the US variant of the PS1 Controller was 10% larger to account for the larger hands that the average American has, compared to the average Japanese person.

Dual Analog Controller

Now, you might have noticed that something was missing from the original PS1 Controller, those were the Joysticks. Well, they were actually only added in 1997, three years later, when Sony introduced the new Dual Analog Controller. This was, for a most part, just a PS1 Controller with Dual Joysticks added to it for “more refined controls in games”, according to Sony. The Shoulder Buttons were now larger, especially the R2 & L2 Buttons. More importantly, Sony also added an Analog Button, which was used to switch between different modes.

There were three modes that this Controller had. There was Digital Mode, which disabled the Joysticks, Analog Mode, which enabled the Joysticks, and then finally we had the Analog Joystick Mode, which emulated Sony’s separate Analog ‘Flight-Stick’ accessory. The Dual Analog Controller was indeed a pretty big upgrade and really the first ever upgrade we got in a Sony Controller.

DualShock

In November of the same year, Sony released another Controller, which they called DualShock. The main change from the Dual Analog controller was the fact that Sony added Vibration Feedback in order to immerse you more into the game.

Now, each game had to support Vibration Feedback, things such as punching a character, or doing an action in a game like opening a door, would trigger this vibration. Nintendo already had this with the N64’s Rumble Pack, but Sony decided to step it up a notch by adding a Vibration Motor in each of the Hand-Grips, rather than just having one main Vibration Motor.

Not only that, but these two Motors didn’t require a separate Battery to work, like Nintendo’s Rumble Pack did. Instead, they just worked inside the Controller and they were powered by the Controllers cable. So, that was pretty big, games started implementing Vibration Support heavily and we all know how important this is today. The other change that the DualShock brought to the table was even bigger Shoulder Buttons, compared to the Dual Analog.

DualShock 2

Next up, we have the DualShock 2. Originally introduced in 2000, the DualShock 2 was launched alongside the PlayStation 2.

Pressure Sensitive Buttons opened the door for developers to experiment with games even further.

The main change was that the entire Controller was now black, as opposed to the grey look that we’ve had since the original PS1 Controller. Aside from this, some users reported that the Vibration Motor felt stronger in the DualShock 2, although this was never confirmed. But what we did indeed get, were Pressure Sensitive Buttons.

Essentially, aside from the Joysticks and the Start, Select, Analog, L3 and R3, the rest of the buttons were all pressure sensitive. Meaning that rather than just registering a value of ‘1’ when pressed, it would register anything between ‘0’ and ‘1’ from the moment you rested your finger on it. This was extremely useful in Racing games, where you could accelerate just a tiny bit by only lightly pressing the Shoulder Button.

Sixaxis Controller

In 2006, with the introduction of the PlayStation 3, Sony launched the DualShock 3. Actually, just kidding, it was the Sixaxis Controller that came first.

This was the first PlayStation Controller that was completely wireless.

Design wise, it looked almost identical to the PS2 Controller, which was released six years prior. But, the biggest change here was that it was completely wireless. You still had a cable that you would use for charging and you could keep it connected if you wanted to do so, but the Controller itself could now be used without a cable at all. It would work just as well as before.

On top of this, Sony added 6-axis Motion-Sensing Technology, hence the name of their Sixaxis Controller. This meant that the Controller could feel Rotation and Translation across the X, Y & Z axis, allowing you to, for example, control a Car by just using the Controller as steering wheel, or control a Plane by using the controller like a Yoke. It was pretty cool!

Unfortunately, the Sixaxis functionality didn’t end up being used as much as Sony had hoped. Even to this day, 14 years later, there are very few games that do make full use of it. Also, fun-fact, Sixaxis was a palindrome, meaning that if you reverse the word, it would still spell Sixaxis. Also, Sony removed the famous Vibration Motors entirely from the Sixaxis Controller, due to a patent dispute that Sony was having.

Aside from this, the Analog button was replaced by a ‘PlayStation’ Button, which would just take you Home. The Sixaxis also included finer Shoulder Button precision, compared to the DualShock 2 Controller.

DualShock 3

Less than a year after the new Sixaxis Controller was launched, Sony had managed to settle the patent battle against Immersion (who sued them) and because of this, they could use Vibration Feedback once more.

So, Sony released the DualShock 3, which was really just a Sixaxis Controller with the added Vibration Feedback. Aside from that, it was pretty much identical to the Sixaxis. Sony did end up releasing new colours for the DualShock 3 Controller, including White, which looked absolutely stunning. This the very first time that Sony would release multiple colour variants of their Controllers.

DualShock 4

Then, in 2013, when Sony launched the PS4, they also launched the DualShock 4. Unlike all of the previous Controllers, which all looked pretty much identical, the DualShock 4 was actually the first major change for a PlayStation Controller.

The Handles were now more rounded, longer and overall, the entire Controller was much more comfortable to hold, compared to any of the previous ones. The Joysticks were now Concave, as opposed to Convex, like the previous ones were. Personally, I did find them way more comfortable compared to the DualShock 3 Controller for example.

But, as well as this, the DualShock 4 also had some other gigantic changes. It removed the Start & Select Buttons and added a massive Touchpad instead, which could recognise multiple fingers at the same time. This was a capacitive, rather than a resistive, touch surface. It was pressable as well, so it acted as an extra Button.

Unfortunately, just like the Sixaxis Motion-Sensing technology, the Touchpad didn’t really get used by games at all, aside from some exclusive games such as ‘Little Big Planet’ and ‘Astrobot VR’. Most games use it as a Button for the Map or the Highscore, acting in the same way as the Tab Key on PCs.

Compared to previous generations, this was a huge design leap.

The other big change was that the back of the Controller had a big LED Strip. The main purpose of this was that the PlayStation 4 Camera could track its movement, you could use it in games this way. Following the PlayStationVR’s release, the light was also used by the PlayStation 4’s Camera to track the moment of the Controller, in VR. Aside from this, the light would also change its colour based on certain events in a game. For example, if your Health would run low, the light would turn red, but if you were at Full Health, the light would be green.

The PS4 controller, also added a Speaker for sound effects. It also added a proprietary Connector for connecting things such as a Keyboard Attachment or the new Back Button Attachment. It also added a 3.5mm Headphone Jack, which allowed you to connect any set of Headphones to it, you would hear the audio from the games directly from your Controller with no noticeable lag at all. That was incredible and definitely my favourite feature ever, in any Controller. We also got a new Options Button for bringing up the Options Menu in games, as well as a new Share Button for taking screenshots and video recordings of your Gameplay. We also got a microUSB Port, a change from the miniUSB Port that we had on the DualShock 3 Controller.

Sony also expanded on the success that the coloured versions of the DualShock 3 received by releasing even more colour options for the PS4 Controller. We also saw limited editions of the PS4 that also came bundled with a limited edition Controller. All of these improvements made the PS4 Controller a massive technological leap, compared to its predecessors.

DualShock 4 Pro

The latest version that we can currently get our hands on. This was a small tweak to the existing design.

When Sony launched the PS4 Pro in 2016, they also released an updated version of the DualShock 4. It was still called the DualShock 4, but this was the PS4 Pro version of it. This now reflected the Light-Bar onto the Touchpad as well, so that you could also see it more easily. It also included the ability to use it via a wired USB connection, with even lower Latency than when connected wirelessly, and it also featured an improved Battery Life.

DualSense

Finally, the latest Controller that Sony has unveiled, is the Playstation 5 Controller. Interestingly enough, rather than this being called the DualShock 5, it is called the DualSense.

Design wise, just like the DualShock 4, the DualSense embraces a completely fresh design style. This time, coming in a dual-tone colour scheme. The one that Sony has showed us came in White, with Black Accents, but we do expect Sony to launch even more colour options. There will very likely be a Black Controller with White Accents as well as a few more colour variants as well.

Aside from the colour scheme, the shape of the Controller is now very different as well. It resembles the Xbox One Controller much more than ever before. It is bigger, heavier and according to Sony, it feels more premium than ever before. We still have the same Buttons as before, but all those Buttons have a glass enclosure, which again is similar to how they look on the Xbox. So, gone are the coloured Action Buttons that we’ve seen for so many years now.

The ‘Options’ and ‘Share’ Buttons are still there. The ‘Share’ has been renamed into the ‘Create’ Button but it still acts the same way. They have also been rotated slightly to make room for the larger Touchpad. Which still has the built-in LED light, but it now surrounds the Touchpad rather than being underneath it.

Something about the DualSense looks a little familiar.

In case you’re wondering about that back LED light, that now seems to be gone entirely, which means that the PSVR 2 will very likely use a very different tracking technology. We’ve seen multiple patents on this before, where Sony would be using a laser-based tracking system for the PSVR 2. But anyway, that’s not said to be released until at least 2021.

Another change that the DualSense comes with is USB C Port, a change from the microUSB Connector, meaning that now you can use a Smartphone charger, a Laptop charger or pretty much anything, to charge the PS5 Controller. Battery Life has been improved significantly, according to Sony. They’ve also added on-board Microphones, meaning that you can now chat without having a Microphone plugged in. Of course, the 3.5mm Headphone Jack is still there, in case you do want to add some Headphones.

Now, let’s talk about the big changes here, the ones that will affect your Gameplay. The first ones are the brand new ‘Adaptive Pressure Sensitive’ L2 & R2 Triggers. Just like pulling a Bow-String or an actual Gun Trigger, they will be harder to push, the further you push down. This does sound very similar to what Microsoft added in their Xbox One Controller.

The biggest change, and the reason why this is called DualSense, is that it features a full Haptic Engine all throughout the Controller. Ok, but what is this exactly? You know how on modern Smartphones, such as the iPhone 11, the Pixel 4, the Samsung Galaxy S20’s, the OnePlus 8 and many others, we have an improved Vibration Motor that gives you a tactile response, whenever you press a Menu or Action Button? It essentially gives you the impression that you pressed a physical Button. Well, the PS5’s Haptic Feedback would be similar, just on Steroids. According to Sony, the Haptic Feedback is so good that you’ll be able to feel the textures on different roads. You’ll be able to feel mud, asphalt, ice and more, or even feel how different Guns shoot. From what I’ve heard, this is an absolute game changer.

So, there you go. This is how far we’ve come from the original PS1 Controller and I’m personally really looking forward to trying the PS5 Controller out!

ZONEofTECH

October 18, 2019

Leaks & Rumors

[EXCLUSIVE] PS5 (2020) - First Look, Release Date & More!

ZONEofTECH

October 18, 2019

Leaks & Rumors

So a last week we put out a video about the PS5 and the response was amazing! But since then we have had even more leaks and even an exclusive never seen before image of the PS5. If you haven’t seen that video, check it out on this link. But for now let us give you a breakdown of all the new leaks we have!

LEAKED IMAGE

Ok, so a few days ago, someone who I’m not going to name, sent me an email that contained something very unique, an actual first look at the PlayStation 5!

Right off the bat, this design looks pretty much identical to the leaked PS5 patent that I’ve talked about in the previous video. We have the same V shape vent in the middle, we have the exact same air exhausts on the sides and probably on the back as well.

So on the left, we have the optical drive unit this will support double layer blu-ray drives, up to 100GB in size.

And then we have all the buttons and ports that we’ve had in the actual patent as well including buttons for; On/Standby, Reset, Eject, System Initialisation and Network initialisation.

On the right hand side, we have that weird connector, that looks to be a USB type B port, then 5 more USB type A ports, out of which the 1st one seem to be USB 2.0, judging by the black inside. The next 3 seem to be USB 3.0 or higher, judging by the blue inside and then we have one more that seems to have an actual cable plugged into it. That’s probably USB 3.0 or higher as well.

And then we also have that weird circle which I believed to be a camera, looking at the patent. Especially since we have had reports that Sony and Microsoft as well, could actually be including 4K cameras into the consoles itself, for live-streaming. But looking at this leaked image, I cannot see any camera lens or anything inside of that, so that round thing is probably just the power button in this case.

But as you can see, all of these match perfectly with the actual ports on the PS5 patent. Same layout, same number, same dimensions, so this is indeed the real deal.

Now, there are a few more things in this image, that weren’t visible in the patent. For example, we have a few more light indicators, from 7 to 0 on the left hand side, which probably show the number of controllers connected or, even more likely, the number of CPU cores being used. We also have 2 more status lights – status 2 and status 1. 1 appears to be lit up. Then we have a hidden serial number and some sort of QR code I think, on the right and a label saying that this is a prototype, Prototype 1 in this case, and that it is not for sale.

So yes, it seems like this is indeed a developers unit and not the final version of the PS5.

In that previous video I did say that I found it odd that Sony was patenting the development unit and that I actually believed that to be the final version of the PS5. Now, the thing is the final PS5 would not look identical to this Developer Kit that we see here, but there is a very strong change that it will indeed look very very similar.

The cooling system on the Dev Kit looks to be extremely well designed. It looks like there has been a lot of thought put into this. How it sucks the air from the middle with that massive V shaped intake, which by the way, V is also the roman numeral for 5. The Air is then blown out through the sides and the back, which we cannot see in this image. So the cooling system is very well done, another reason why I think that Sony would definitely not downgrade the cooling in the final unit. Otherwise this is also going to cause a huge performance issue. If the developers work on their games and in the final unit, they end up running worse because the system is throttling due to the downgraded cooling, well that won’t be good for anyone.

Our concept of the PS5 based on the previously leaked patent.

Now, in the last video, we actually did actually make our very own concept based on that leaked patent and we’ve even made some changes of our own. For example, we added a water cooling system that goes all around the console, cooling both the processor and the graphics card, which would be located right in the middle of the unit. The fans will still be present which will further help cool the system down.

Now even though we have made our concept more visually appealing than in the actual Sony Patent by aligning the ports, cleaning up some details and adding LED’s and water cooling, a lot of you said that it was still quite ugly. Which is true, let’s be honest it is not the prettiest console. Personally I don’t really care about the looks as long as it’s properly cooled and it runs at 4K60 like Sony officially confirmed, on the highest settings possible, without any frame drops.

Now something that I did mention in the previous video, was that on the top of the PS5, we had something that kinda looked like rubber feet. Interesting enough, if we go back to that PS5 image and bump up the shadows, you can now easily see that those rubber feet are actually here on the dev kit as well. Now this makes me think that you can also flip the PS5 and have the air intake on the bottom rather than on the top and in that case, it could actually look better.

Now, I tried looking at the image for some more details. EXIF files were all removed, so I couldn’t see any details such as what camera module took this, when it was taken and where but I could at least see the file name. And this was ‘2019-10-10 at 03:49:44am’, so judging by the file name at least, this was taken just a few days ago, probably when no-one else was in the building, because of that time.

So, in conclusion regarding this PS5 design, the bad this is that we still don’t have a look at the final design. However, the good news is that the PS5 will have a brand new cooling system, which like I said, will very likely end up being extremely similar to this patent and it will also look prettier at the same time.

The PS4 Pro dev kit was just gigantic, same for the PS4 dev kit, and the final units ended up being much smaller and thinner and they also looked so much better. So whatever the PS5 is going to look like, it won’t be as ugly as the dev kit unit is.

MARK CERNY

Now, aside from this we’ve also had some more details regarding the PS5 directly from Sony themselves.

The Wired posted a massive article with a ton of exclusive details on the PS5, coming from Mark Cerny, the lead architect on the PS5 and here’s what they said.

First of all, Playstation 5 is the official name. Which I mean I think we all kind of knew that this was going to be the case, but Sony has only referred to the PS5 as “next-gen” console whenever they talked about it. But now, the official name is confirmed and surprise surprise it’s PS5.

Next up the release date is also official. Mark Cerny confirmed that the PS5 is coming in Holiday Season 2020. Which was also what I believed to be the case as well. So a November – December release date is very likely going to be the case here. I would even say that November is looking more likely than December, since that way retailers would have enough time to stock the PS5 in stores for Christmas a month later.

It is also confirmed now that the PS5 will have an AMD Ryzen CPU and an AMD Navi architecture GPU. There will be no more spinning hard-drive, instead we would have an insanely fast flash storage inside the unit, with read and write speeds of close to 2GB/s. Now, the only problem with this, is that this kind of storage is very expensive. So Sony will very likely limit this to 1TB, but hopefully they will be offering some higher capacity models. I personally am quite curious to see how this would impact external storage. Obviously if games are optimised at loading their assets for that insanely fast internal storage, and then some users add an external HDD for more capacity, this would have a huge downgrade on the game’s performance. So I do believe that Sony might limit external devices to external SSDs, or even release some sort of 1st party m.2 enclosure, which with those USB 3.0 or even 3.2 ports, that should be able to reach 1GB/s speeds as well.

Aside from this, Cerny has also confirmed that the PS5 will actually have hardware accelerated Ray-Tracing support. Now we did know that the PS5 will indeed support ray tracing, but we weren’t sure if this would be software based or not. But from the report it seems like it would actually be hardware enabled, just like the Nvidia RTX series of graphic cards! Pretty impressive! This would significantly improve the graphics quality and the realism in games. We’ve seen the same thing happen with Minecraft, where enabling RTX would literally turn it into a different game, something that looks almost as realistic as real life. Whereas Minecraft, as you all probably known, was quite a different story.

A comparison of Minecraft graphics with RTX enabled (Right) and disabled (Left) (Source: Nvidia)

On top of this, Mark Cerny also said that the game size will be noticeably reduced. At the moment since the HDD is so slow the data actually had to be duplicated in some cases on the disk, just to make it more easily accessible. This will no longer be required with the flash storage.

And Mark Cerny as also confirmed that the PS5 will be using 100GB Blu-Ray disks, essentially dual layer Blu-Ray drives AND the PS5 will also support 4K Blu-Ray disks for watching movies, which the PS4 Pro ironically lacked. Sony invented Blu-Ray disks and the Blu-Ray players and they also hold all the rights for those, yet, they didn’t include one on the PS4 Pro for movies.

Something else he mentioned was that the game installation would be different on the PS5. Apparently, you would now be able to select which part of a game to install. For example, you would now be able to uninstall the campaign, if you’ve finished that or even the multiplayer, if it’s something you’re not interested in, and save some crucial space.

The UI will also be redesigned. Now you will be able to see your game missions and even the game lobby, without even starting the game, as all of this will now be visible on the home-screen.

And yeah, there’s even more updates that Mark Cerney has shared, including a completely redesigned controller, so keep an eye out for another video and article, as I’ve got a ton of things I want to cover in that one as well.