Sony PlayStation 5 with haptic feedback has been confirmed by SIE President Jim Ryan in an official blog post. After an interview with PlayStation system architect Mark Cerny in April 2019, there has been no official communication from the side of Sony regarding PlayStation 5.

After many months, several new features have been confirmed by the company about their upcoming next gen-console. For starters, the successor to PlayStation 4 will officially be known as the PlayStation 5 or PS5 and it will launch during the holidays 2020. Around the same time, Microsoft also plans to launch its next-gen Xbox gaming console, known only as the Project Scarlett.

What’s also new in the upcoming PlayStation 5 is the haptic feedback-enabled controller. The Next Generation of Dual Shock 4 (DS 4) controllers will feature haptic feedback technology allowing for an ultra-immersive experience. Also new on the controller are the “adaptive triggers” that’ll deliver varying levels of resistance to the L2 and R2 buttons.

A lot of other new features including 4K Blu-Ray drives, USB-C ports, UI, etc., have been revealed in the latest update from PlayStation. We have compiled a list of all those features to explain why the PS5 release date will be the day when PC gamers turn to console gaming.

Here’s Why PS 5 With Haptic Feedback Tech Will Change Gaming

1. PS 5 Next Gen Controllers Will Offer A Variety Of Sensations

The PlayStation 5 haptic feedback technology will replace the rumble vibrations found in the PS4. It is a great thing because new haptic tech delivers a gaming experience unlike any other. Peter Rubin, who visited PlayStation headquarters for an exclusive sneak peek at the PS5 said: “I ran a character through a platform level featuring a number of different surfaces, all of which gave distinct—and surprisingly immersive—tactile experiences.” Running on sand and mud felt slow and soggy while jumping into water delivered a sense of resistance. This is the level of immersive experience Sony wants to deliver.

Rubin also drove around the different surfaces of the race track in the racing sim game Gran Turismo which was running on a PS5 devkit. According to him, the sensation of driving on the asphalt was completely different than driving on sand.

“Doing the same thing on the same track using a DualShock 4 on a PS4, that sensation disappeared entirely”, Rubin added commenting on the new haptic technology of PS5 controllers.

According to Product manager Toshi Aoki, they could have easily introduced the haptic feedback tech in the PS4 Pro, which was a mid-generation console Sony introduced in November 2016.

Sony says that the haptic feedback tech was in development at the same time PS4 was being crafted. Rubin describes the PS5 controller as “an unlabeled matte-black doohickey that looks an awful lot like the PS4’s DualShock.”

The new PS5 controller comes with a USB Type-C port and is heavier than the DS4 due to the weight of bigger batteries, better speakers, and haptic vibration motors. However, the new controllers are still lighter as compared to a current Xbox One gamepad with batteries attached to it.

The next-gen PS5 controllers will also feature “adaptive triggers” for L2 and R2, meaning they’ll offer different levels of resistance and sensation depending upon on-screen footage. For example, players will feel a level of resistance while pulling the string of a bow and an entirely different kind of sensation while firing a machine gun.

2. PS5 Will Feature Backward compatibility

Unlike the PS3 which was based on cell-architecture, the PS4 and PS5 share an X86 platform. This allows the PS5 to be backward compatible with PS4 games. When Rubin interviewed Mark Cerny back in April 2019, he wrote: “As in many other generational transitions, this will be a gentle one.” It’s true as a number of games will be released for PS4 even after the launch of PlayStation 5.

Apart from a minor miscommunication from Sony, the backward compatibility of PS4 on PS5 is all but confirmed.

This will allow PS4 users to experience popular PS4 titles like Spiderman, BloodBorne, God of War and Uncharted next-gen hardware. Another really cool feature for PS5 is that it will allow crossplay with PS4 users. It means that if you own a PS4 and your friends have a PS5, both of you will still be able to enjoy multiplayer gaming without any problem.

3. PS5 Will Allow You To Check In-Game Missions Without Launching The Game

The PlayStation 5 comes with an improved User Interface that’ll change the way people experience games. According to Mark Cerny, the revamped user interface of PS 5 will allow players to check in-game details like what missions they are playing, what rewards they’ll get for completing a level, how many of their friends are online, etc., without even opening the game. All of this information will be easily accessible from the console menu.

Commenting on this feature, Cerny said: “Even though it will be fairly fast to boot games, we don’t want the players to have to boot the game to see what’s up.”

4. The Games Will Load On PS5 In The Blink Of An Eye

If you’ve ever played an open-world RPG like the Witcher 3 on a base PS4 then you know that loading times can be excruciatingly long. Loading saved games in the said game could take up to a minute and a half, which feels ancient in 2019. Thankfully, the PS5 will come with a custom-made Solid State Drive (SSD) that’ll make loading times a thing of the past.

The new SSD won’t simply be fast, it’d be fairly efficient as well. Cerny gave the example of Marvel’s Spiderman on PS4 to explain the performance of the new SSD. “Inside the game, there are some pieces of data duplicated 400 times on the hard drive,” explained Cerny. With the new storage drive on the PS5 game, developers can avoid duplicating data that’ll save a lot of space on the game disc.

This, in turn, will allow them to create bigger and more immersive game worlds that’ll load in just the blink of an eye.

Commenting on the performance of the storage on PS5 BluePoint Games’ president Marco Thrush said he was “really excited” by the potential of the device. “You don’t need to do gameplay hacks anymore to artificially slow players down,” he added.

5. PlayStation 5 Will Allow Users To Install Certain Parts Of The Game

The upcoming console from Sony will allow users to install some parts of the game instead of the entire game. Meaning if you simply want to play Multiplayer mode in a certain game then you’ll be able to do that. It would be particularly helpful for people who play e-sports titles like Call of Duty, Fortnite, etc.

Commenting on this new feature, Cerny said: “Rather than treating games like big blocks of data, we’re allowing a granular level of control over it.”

6. PS5 Will Feature 4K 60 FPS Gaming

During a previous interview with Mike Cerny, Peter Rubin wrote that “the console will support 8k graphics.” Although this statement seems a little far fetched considering the most powerful GPU, the Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti can barely support 8K gaming, it is entirely possible that PS5 supports 4k resolution gaming at 60 Frames Per Second (FPS). The most powerful console of this generation, like Microsoft’s Xbox One X, is able to render games like Forza Horizon 4k @ 60 FPS, so PS5 will easily do the same.

The PS5 will use a custom-made Navi-based GPU and a Ryzen-based CPU to do deliver exceptional gaming performance

7. The PlayStation 5 GPU Will Have Ray Tracing

“There is a ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware, which I believe is the statement that people were looking for,” says PlayStation system architect Mark Cerny. There were certain rumors around the internet that the PlayStation will use a software-based solution for providing ray-tracing support in modern games. However, it has been confirmed that the GPU of PS5 will have inbuilt hardware to support ray-tracing.

8. PS5 Will Come With An Ultra HD 4K Blu-Ray Player

The PS5 will come with a physical 4k Blue-Ray disc drive. During the interview, Cerny confirmed this feature when he said: “Physical games for the PS5 will use 100-GB optical disks, inserted into an optical drive that doubles as a 4K Blu-ray player.”

The PS4 Pro despite being a 4k gaming console had no Ultra HD disc Blu-Ray player. Microsoft one-upped Sony’s Pro console by giving a 4k player on the Xbox One X. However, Sony is leaving no stone unturned with its next generation of consoles.

9. PlayStation 5 Will be More Environment-Friendly

Jim Ryan recently announced that the PS5 will come with a Power-saving mode. “The next-generation PlayStation console will include the possibility to suspend gameplay with much lower power consumption than PS4,” Ryan said.

According to Sony, if 1 million players used this feature on the PS5, then they’d save enough energy to power 1,000 homes in America.

The 8th Gen Consoles Were A Disappointment

The PlayStation 5 is a huge leap in terms of performance from the PS4. The 8th generation of the console, which included the PS4 and Xbox One, was clearly the most underwhelming one. They used a Jaguar-based APU and had a graphic performance equivalent to an AMD 79XX series.

Both the PS4 and Xbox One ended up needing a mid-cycle refresh in order to keep moving forward. However, Sony did manage to crank up some really outstanding first-party titles during this generation.

Therefore, I am excited to see what the developers do with the beastly capabilities of PS5. Several game developers already have Dev-kits and are currently working on new titles.

Marco Thrush from Bluepoint Games, which developed the Shadow of Colossus, said: “We’re working on a big one right now,” thus affirming his studio’s involvement in a big project.

Commenting on the raw power of the PS5 Laura Miele, Chief Studio Officer, EA said: “We’re seeing the GPU be able to power machine learning for all sorts of really interesting advancements in the gameplay and other tools.” She further said that “it’s the speed of everything that will define the next crop of consoles.”