Sony PS5 buyers and owners (1 Viewer)

[Bryan^H]

I remember when the PS4 launched, it was pretty hard to locate a console if you didn't have an early pre-order in. I didn't locate one until 4 months later, and I just got lucky when I found one at Wal-Mart (they were still sold out online for a while after that yet).

I think the PS5 will be harder to obtain than the PS4 was at launch. Time to make up my mind and go all in, or wait, and be sorry.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I'd say preorder it right away and cancel if you decide you don't really want it when it comes time for launch. If you're going to buy it early enough that you'll pay full price, anyway, then you might as well try to get a preorder and get it sooner rather than later.

 

[John_Bilbrey]

I'm trying to remember how I got my PS4 - fairly certain I pre-ordered from Amazon and got a launch console. It was one of the DOA units with the HDD issue...I was furious. To their credit, Sony handled it like a champ. I had my repaired console (or a new one) in a couple of days.

Edit: I remember trying to find one in the interim and being unable to for some time afterwards on a retail shelf. They were scarce for many weeks after launch.

 

[Bryan^H]

I'm trying to remember how I got my PS4 - fairly certain I pre-ordered from Amazon and got a launch console. It was one of the DOA units with the HDD issue...I was furious. To their credit, Sony handled it like a champ. I had my repaired console (or a new one) in a couple of days.

Edit: I remember trying to find one in the interim and being unable to for some time afterwards on a retail shelf. They were scarce for many weeks after launch.

Sony's customer service is legendary now. I once didn't have password enabled on my PS4, without me knowing my very young nephews bought like $100 worth of DLC for a game. Sony let me keep all the content, and gave me my money back. THAT is going above, and beyond customer service.

 

[DaveF]

Caveat pandemic, what's the notional launch date for the PS5? I'm thinking of buying one for The Last of Us 2. Doubly so if I upgrade to a 4K projector.

But...I haven't turned on my PS4 in over a year (maybe two?). So it depends on pricing. $600 console, I'm out for a while. $300 launch, more likely. And how well received TLOU2 is.

 

[LeoA]

I'm unaware of any such announcements for the PS5 or Xbox Series X, but I imagine the September-November time frame.

That's a pretty typical period to launch a new console, although spring launches also happen (Which I imagine is the fallback rather than delay for 12 months, if it takes too long for manufacturing to catch up from the delays happening at the moment).

And I doubt there's any chance of $300. I imagine $400 is the lowest possibility and even that may be optimistic. I wouldn't be shocked to see a $500 MSRP.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Like Leo said, no info from Sony or MS about the time/price of launch. Rumors are that MS actually is launching with two consoles (Series X and the yet-to-be-announced Series S) and Sony has been looking at launching 2 versions of the PS5 (the original PS5 design turned out to be less powerful than Series X, so they may have a standard and more powerful model at launch). The original launch date of both was rumored to be around October (to be out before Christmas shopping season starts, which is now like Halloween) and COVID-19 might not impact that too much since the plans were set up way in advance. Most likely, a delay towards Christmas but still in 2020. For pricing, neither company can lock it down yet because the market fluctuations are affecting components but most likely the top-end models will be around $500-600 and the lower end models $300-400.

There's a rumor that MS wanted the Series X to be $450-500 and the Series S to be $250. Series S would have no disc drive and be less powerful (more on the order of the One X) to really push GamePass and Xbox Live and xCloud. But apparently this has changed and it will have a disc drive now so the price will be closer to $300 at least.

All of this is rumors that hopefully are sorted out by June-ish.

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Tweet from Playstation UK account:

Tomorrow at 4pm GMT, PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny provides a deep dive into PS5's system architecture and how it will shape the future of games. Watch tomorrow on PlayStation Blog: play.st/33ria3S

 

[John_Bilbrey]

I'd wager that the launch console will be $500USD.

 

[Sam Posten]

 

[Sam Posten]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...s-and-tech-that-deliver-sonys-next-gen-vision

 

[Jeff Cooper]

I'm concerned about the storage space. Today's AAA games push 100GB, and of course next gens will be even bigger. 825GB of space will fill up really quickly and you're looking at major $$$$ to expand that. External drives are now storage only and you have to copy the game onto the internal drive to actually play it, unlike the PS4. It's gonna be a big bummer to only have room for 5-ish games at a time playable. And copying 100GB+ of data from external USB drives takes a loooooong time.

 

[LeoA]

Sounds like PS4 backwards compatibility will be limited to a degree. They expect to have almost all of the top 100 PS4 games (Ranked by play time) at launch, which is good. But for the hundreds of good games that aren't chart toppers, that promise appears to guarantee that there's going to be lots of gaps.

That may change some of my purchasing decisions when it comes to picking the PS4 or XB1 version of a multiplatform game, since I know that I have a guarantee that the latter will still be playable on the XB1's successor thanks to unrestricted XB1 backwards compatibility.

One tidbit of news today that pleased me was hearing that you can use external HDD storage for playing PS4 games directly.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Jeff - I think part of Cerny's presentation hinted at the ability for developers to reduce the space that current-gen games take up because of how much repeated data there is (to increase load speeds because of HDD fragmentation) and the speed of decompression. He also said they picked a HDD size based on what most gamers actually use. And there is an expansion bay inside the PS5 for adding another SSD, even though that's an additional cost, which will run just as fast as the internal PS5 drive.

Serious question: how many games do you actually have installed on your HDD at a time that you actually play? I have a bunch on my PS4 but I really only play 1 at a time, maybe 2. The SSD speeds will allow games to be installed from discs much faster, so having to re-install a game because it's not one of the 5-7 that you have installed already won't be that painful.

Leo - he said that PS4 backward compatibility hasn't been 100% tested on every game but that they already got it working well on the top 100 PS4 games. There's over 4000 games on PS4 and they won't check all of them but they're going to keep checking more as time goes on. My biggest disappointment with this was that I was hoping to hear about PS1-3 backward compatibility so I can finally retire my PS3, but no dice.

 

[LeoA]

I wasn't holding my breath for PS3, but I was hoping for the same or at least PS1/PS2 compatibility.

Always the chance more will happen in this area going forward, but seems safe to assume it's not part of their launch plans. Not a shocker I'm afraid, but I was always hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Bryan^H]

My biggest disappointment with this was that I was hoping to hear about PS1-3 backward compatibility so I can finally retire my PS3, but no dice.

Yeah, the whole "Hold on to your PS1-PS3 games" quote seems to be nothing but misinformation. So much about this system has yet to be revealed though. My biggest curiosity is VR. Will they implement a new wireless headset for the PS5?

 

[Jeff Cooper]

Serious question: how many games do you actually have installed on your HDD at a time that you actually play? I have a bunch on my PS4 but I really only play 1 at a time, maybe 2. The SSD speeds will allow games to be installed from discs much faster, so having to re-install a game because it's not one of the 5-7 that you have installed already won't be that painful.

Yeah, I typically only play 1-2 games at a time. It's just that collectors mentality that I like being able to scroll through my games and know I can play any one of them should I have the desire to. I have over 300 installed on my PS4, and have never deleted a single one. Same thing as all my blu-rays that 90% of I will probably never watch again

Also if you read the article Sam posted above it seems like the internal expansion isn't really going to be that viable for a long time. Today's commercially available SSD drives aren't up to the PS5 drive specs, and when they will be they will be $$$$$$$. Not really a good option.

 

[Nigel P]

It looks like both consoles are making a big jump forward this gen with each taking a slightly different approach to where they have concentrated their resources. Very interested to see prices and dates, although that must all be up in the air right now. Oh and games of course, can't forget them as much as I love new tech.

 

[LeoA]

After wording the other day that cast doubt on how extensive PS4 coverage would be, Sony has now clarified that "we believe that the overwhelming majority of the 4,000+ PS4 titles will be playable on PS5".

Certainly good news, but I hope there's no exceptions I care about. When I buy a PS5 one of these days, it would suit me just fine to box up the PS4 and save a little space or move it to a different television.

 

[Dave Upton]

I really enjoyed the presentation by Mark Cerny, thanks @Sam Posten for sharing.

I have heard rumors that they are struggling with the thermal load of the PS5 in its current form factor, though Cerny apparently refuted that. I think the fact they've gone constant frequency instead of constant power speaks to a thermal challenge. I hope i'm wrong.

Microsoft was extremely wise in adopting a mini-ITX form factor for the XBox One X