Sony announces curvy Playstation 5 and new games

Sony has showcased a fresh white design for its Playstation 5 alongside a suite of games including the return of familiar characters interspersed with entirely new titles.

Coming seven years after the launch of the PS4, Sony’s machine will launch alongside Microsoft’s rival Xbox Series X by the end of the year. The PS5 has a smooth black-and-white design dominated by two distinctive “wings”, with one version shipping without any disc drive. 

Two sequels to bestselling PS4 releases have also been announced – Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Horizon: Forbidden West. Miles Morales is a black protagonist established by Marvel Comics as a role model for young people of colour after the election of Barack Obama.

The gaming giant unveiled its new console to millions of viewers in a live stream on Thursday night, promising to herald the “future of gaming”.  

Sony’s event had been pushed back last week amid Black Lives Matter protests across the US, saying it was not the moment for “celebration” and pledging to “stand back and allow more important voices to be heard.”

More than two dozen new games were shown off in total. Other highlights included a first look at Sony’s racing game Grand Turismo 7 and a brief look at Capcom’s zombie horror game Resident Evil 8. Also announced was a remake of the Japanese cult classic Demons’ Souls.

The launch came just before Microsoft reveals the first first-party games for its competing Xbox Series X. The two companies are racing to get their competing consoles to market, with their decisions likely to influence gaming culture and habits for years to come.

Neither company has yet offered any specific launch date or price, though both are expected to launch in the holiday season.

Under the hood, the Playstation 5 will be powered by a 3.5GHz eight core AMD Zen 2 central processor, a 2.23GHz graphics processing unit based on AMD’s RDNA architecture, 16GB of RAM and a newly-designed 825GB solid state hard drive.

Solid state drives, consisting of memory chips similar to those inside a USB stick, are faster than the standard hard disc drives used by the PS4, and Sony has claimed the new storage system will load game content almost twice as quickly.