Sony started talking about what the PlayStation 5 is capable of last month, now it's beginning to show off what that extra performance means when compared to the PS4 Pro.
As The Verge reports, during a Sony investor meeting a video was shown of the PS4 game Marvel's Spider-Man loading a level. The same load is carried out on the PS4 Pro and the "Next Generation (under development)" hardware, which is how Sony is currently referring to the PS5.
The difference in load times as you can see in the tweeted video below is quite staggering. On the PS4 Pro the level loads in 8.1 seconds, but on PS5 it's cut to just 0.83 seconds.
Sony's official video comparing performance of PS4 Pro vs next-gen PlayStation pic.twitter.com/2eUROxKFLq — Takashi Mochizuki (@mochi_wsj) May 21, 2019
The huge difference in time is mainly down to the fact the PS5 hardware includes an SSD for storage where as the PS4 Pro relies on a hard drive. It means load times for any PS5 title will be significantly shorter than we're used to on the PS4 or the PS3 that came before it.
It's not just initial load times that will be greatly improved, though. The video above demonstrates the PS5's improved dynamic content loading abilities. In Spider-Man, it means fast travel can be done without any stuttering or slowing down of the movement through the city. The extra performance offered by the PS5 hardware combined with the SSD for data streaming is what makes the improvement possible.
The investor meeting also revealed that Sony intends to keep supporting the PS4 for at least the next three years, referring to it as "the engine of engagement and profitability." It shouldn't come as a surprise support will continue for years to come on a platform that's sold 100 million units. Streaming is also set to play a much bigger role in the PS5 ecosystem, with Blu-ray discs, game downloads, and streaming all listed in the "mainstream business model" of a presentation slide. For PS4, only Blu-ray and downloads were listed.
We aren't expecting the PS5 to launch before May 2020, with the safe bet being a Nov. 2020 release. We also know Sony's new console will support 8K visuals, is backwards compatible with the PS4, and is expected to use a third-gen AMD Ryzen processor, Radeon Navi GPU, new 3D audio system, and supports ray-tracing.