We Talk Over: The PS5 Hardware Tech Spec Stream

Live streaming from multiple endpoints, piping in a broadcast AND archiving it... Thank you Giant Bomb.

This was fun. Nice to see the GB energy isn't impacted to harshly by the quarantine

PS5 sounds like a beast.

Also, I hope Alex streams Dreams like he said he wanted to. I can't believe no one has yet. There's so much to explore!

4:21 for the most important part of this whole presentation

Incredibly disappointed in how they built the PS5. They went with a hardware bc setup that is severely gimping them as things move forward. If the Series X didn't exist it would be a far more impressive machine. I fear they'll have a similar price because of the cooling this thing is going to require. Also their deceptive boost modes being the only numbers they list. That thing is going to run at 2ghz on the gpu and/or 3.3 ghz on the cpu the majority of the time.

Yeah. I'm honestly surprised how underwhelmed i am.

Also the Playstation blog says that they're hoping to have 100 ps4 games available as back compat at launch.... HOW?!?!?! you gimped your SoC for BC and still didn't get it right?

Whole thing felt a lot like damage control for having the less powerful console.

@infinity_thor: Cerny crowed about the teraflop advantage in the ps4 reveal, but now it doesn't matter? Ridiculous, it all matters.

This felt a little like a SNL sketch, with Dana Carvey playing some video game guy.

Another great piece of work from GB.... Keep up the great work!

I can't decide if Mark Cerny is one of the people that designed Westworld or populates it (or both?).

As someone who doesn't see himself developing any sort of software for the PS5...this was next to useless for me. I mean, it sounds like Sony is investing a lot of powerful technologies into the platform but I want to see the games they'll be making for it.
The PS4 was worlds ahead of Xbox One (which has barely enough worthwhile games to count on one hand) and I hope their next presentation focuses on that, as well as seeing the box, the controller, some amount of the console's user interface.

That being said the GB crew made this a fun little stream. Cerny is a machine.

This is so fucking boring (and disappointing to anyone not spinning bullshit) that even the Talk-Over is not helping.

I don't care that this was a GDC thing - doing this and basically only this in the current climate and given what your competitor is doing is bafflingly tone-deaf and unaware. Also, I have seen plenty of GDC talks about otherwise boring topics (boring to most) that were interesting based on how they were presented.

I am now fully convinced that Sony is not savvy at all, they only seem that way when their competitor(s) royally fuck up.

"CPU/GPU/RAM doesn't matter, our SDD is faster!" Uhhhhh - ok? MS's relatively slower SDD-tech had demo's showing why we should care at all about it. You are faster and I have no idea if that increased speed matters (it does the same stuff as Xbox Series X but faster?) So I guess, assuming they do game swapping/save states too, I can do it in ~3 seconds instead of 6? Woopie-do. I guess. Maybe. lulzy

BTW, for Sony, you need to wait until AFTER launch (of the PS5) for expanded storage and only a minority of drives will be passing certification (and even Sony doesn't know the details at this point) - also, this high-end NVME stuff is not going to be cheap.

So, SORT OF consumer-friendly on the surface, but the devil is dancing in the details. I wish he would dance on my taint.

One time I watched a video that shows how long it takes light to travel from the sun to the various planets. I got all the way to Saturn.

But this... I can't do it.

Congratulations Sony, you ruined videogames.

I enjoyed this, and I probably understood half of it. I also could listen to Cerny talk about anything

Also - that BC solution is a joke compared to MS. I mean... REALLY? "Up to about 100 of the top-selling PS4 titles" vs "everything that ran on Xbox One, including well over 500 360 games, thousands of Xbox One games, and even dozens of OG Xbox games - also, they all get automatic upgrades".

I mean, Sony's response is typical "I won't the last generation" Are Sony and MS and Nintendo and Sega (and Atari?) designed to be morons because of success? It's like there is a secret cabal of people that control everything and they pick a name out of the hate for someone to "win" and everyone loses, and the rules state you cannot win more than once in a row.

@binarygod: it certainly seems that way, but probably a bit early to call. It def seems like hubris gets the best of Sony/Microsoft every other launch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z59AnkxekfI

How credits do I get for this class

I just watched this now, after spending the work day reading people's (mostly negative) hot takes. Knowing what I was getting into ahead of time really made a difference. I understood 10% of it, but what I did understand was pretty intriguing. And the guys' jokes kept me awake during the audio segment, lol.

My main concern is that third parties are not going to take advantage of all this tech. They want their stuff to also run on PCs and Xboxes, so how many are going to tweak the code to truly optimize the PS5 version?

Secondary concern - backwards compatibility. A lot of people seem to think that it's only going to work on "most" of the top 100 games at launch. But what I gathered from Cerny is that he was referring to a boost/enhanced mode? He said something about AMD building the PS4 logic into the chip, so why wouldn't most PS4 games automatically work on PS5? Why would they ask AMD to do all that research and only have <100 games working at launch? But then, there wasn't any explicit mention of boost mode anywhere else. In any case we can all agree that the messaging on this is pretty confusing. (All I actually want is to play my PS4 backlog with faster load times. Don't even care about better graphics/framerate. I still play on a 1080p monitor.)

Well, I am going to buy a PS5 regardless. Xbox is irrelevant to me because I have literally never touched an Xbox, and I don't like playing on PC much. I just hope the price is good. Canadian exchange rate is total shit right now. Even $399 USD is almost $600.

PS it would be great if they supported remote play with Vita. A girl can dream.

I am pretty sure the "Most of the top 100 PS4 games" was referring to operating in a "Boost" mode, where as if you're running it just as a native PS4 game, it would run fine.

@binarygod: Sony has stated in the past that no one really cares about BC (I disagree) so I guess I am glad there is any at all. The PS4 games that run on the PS5 better be fully enhanced for example Bloodborne with 4K upscall to get rid of AA, solid 60FPS, and zero load times.

I feel like i'm watching Mystery Science Theater 3000...

Is it me or I don't get all the negativity. It sounds very interesting. The technology and engineering work are clearly present. I could listen to Mark Cerny spit game for hours. Maybe I'm used to academic presentations? This is like a billion times more interesting than the presentations I usually sit through and I love listening to someone who clearly knows their shit inside and out.

@yapapanda: I *loved* this talk haha, but I'm also a professional programmer who's interested in this kind of thing. Please just give me a 24 hour audio file of Mark Cerny going over technical specs

Mark Cerny deserves more money, Sony. No other person could've done this better.

All the time spent on the technical benefits of SSD drives over HDD was so pointless and ridiculous. Every single person who would even understand what he is talking about would already be very familiar with and be using SSDs. Like someone made this presentation 5 years ago and decided now was the time to show it.

As a software developer I thoroughly enjoyed this talk. It was a great review of the fundamentals with a lot of interesting optimizations that seem like no brainers for the gaming market.

When will Ray stop tracing and learn how to really draw

Holy shit this was baaaad. Did the ps4 or even ps3 have something this sterile and desperate feeling?

Why in all of Sony's endless buckets of cash did they pull this out? This is some high school level presentation.

I'm not a dev but I get most of the tech mumbo jumbo and this had me a little bit shaky with excitement.

I am primarily a PC gamer but with this thing and the Xbox SeX it stands clear games will change forever when this new generation rolls around. They didn't talk framerates here which is a bit worrying, but at least loadtimes are essentially no more, and we should see almost all texture streaming issues and stuttering resolved - both things that irk me tremendously.

If they can also lock down a framerate and deliver solid frametimes - not the OH GOD ITS EVERYWHERE feature of almost all PS4 games - then we are in for a huge leap. But uh yeah I guess a lot of folks don't care about that, and I totally get that.

The new consoles seem extremely boring from a gameplay perspective, nothing I can't already do on my PC. Just a more powerful box. At this point I'm mostly interested in the prices, they sound very expensive.

No Brad or Jeff? :O Aww man

Total shit, and getting worse. I wouldn't be all that surprised to see it ending up costing a grand, at release.

After seeing this presentation, I'm convinced Mark Cerny is the first successful Android created in human society. The PS5 sounds great BTW...

Don't get all the negativity and hostility. Thought it was a great overview of what they are attempting with the hardware. Of course this talk was directed towards developers so it was definitely more technical than entertaining, but I still found it quite interesting. But I could probably listen to Cerny go on about anything for hours.

Mark Cerny is basically a human version of Mordin from Mass Effect.

Based on the hardware comparisons, Sony are currently doing a better job of marketing a weaker product. Combine that with a successful last-gen for Sony and it looks like the Customers are going to stay on the Sony side of things.

I'm not expecting a PS3 or Xbox One style flip this generation where the incumbent brand completely misses the mark but I would welcome some rebalance between the two - either more event sales figures between MS and Sony, or Sony doubling down on the market success of the PS4 to show show continued improvement.

Ultimately, I favor the Microsoft-Sony duopoly over either side exiting the market. Competition is good for consumers.

Turned this one off halfway through. I'm sure it's interesting for developers but at this point they need some marketing info on the PS5.

It would be cool if you guys were REACTING to what was happening rather than talking over everything. I get it. That's your shtick. But it's VERY disappointing for people that know the hardware side of it and want you guys to be accurate. It's cool, I'll go away.

I fucking love it when Cerny emerges from his hollow, see his shadow and tells us there'll be seven more years of games.

@morbidpixie: if you want that kind of tech talk Digital Foundry have done some good videos and in a ton of depth. let the duders dude.

If I had watched this without you guys I fear I may have stabbed myself.

Is this Dana Carvey doing the Church Lady at GDC

I could listen to Mark Cerny talk about literally anything and I would end up agreeing with him. The most relaxing voice I know.