This is not an upgrade, this is a whole new machine, and we might be getting it next year. 

That's according to Wired.com, who had a sit down with Mark Cerny, who is an executive at Sony of America.

The key question, is whether the console adds another layer to the sorts of experiences you already have access to, or if it allows for fundamental changes in what a game can be.

Tucked away in a secret conference room at Sony's Foster City, California headquarters, we finally get some details of the next generation of Sony's console.

This yet unnamed console - but come on, its the PS5 - has been in development for 4 years now, and according to Cerny, a "number of studios" have already began working with the console. 

The details. 

The "PS5" will have an AMD chipset. The CPU is based on the AMD Ryzen line and will contain 8 cores of the new 7nm Zen 2 architecture. The AMD chipset also includes a custom unit for 3D audio. Something that hasn't changed in the last 15 years.  

The GPU is going to be a modified variant of the Radeon Navi family. It will support "ray tracing". Its a way for light to interact with a 3D environment. Hollywood has been using it for years now. Its just started to make its way into high end processors with Nvidia's recently announced RTX line of cards. Its something that hasn't been seen in gaming at all. 

The biggest change in the next-gen of consoles is the hard drive (HDD). Sony is putting in an SSD, or a Solid State Drive, that will decrease loading times dramatically. Games that would normally take minutes to load, will now only take a few seconds. It also goes a lot deeper than just load times though. Changing from a traditional HDD to an SSD also effects the way the characters move about. Higher read speeds off the HDD means faster movements in game. 

The new Playstation is also said to be able to support 8k graphics and is going to be backward compatible with PS4, since they share similar architecture.  

That's kind of it for now. We won't be getting any new info until Sony is ready, and we won't know anything at E3 since Sony isn't going to be there. Cerny didn't even mention a price point. 

As always, this has been James with Game Fix. Game on everybody! 

Source: Wired