After a solid year of playing coy, Sony finally cut to the chase today and revealed what the PlayStation 5 actually looks like. It turns out, there are two versions – one with a disc slot and one without. And of course, we got our first major glimpse of the lineup of games at launch and beyond, as well as some other accessories.
We weren’t expecting much beyond the usual black box – or, if we were feeling particularly adventurous, maybe a white box. But the PlayStation 5 cuts a surprisingly striking visage. It’s a black box wrapped in a white box! It looks like it straddles the line between stylish and tacky, and our opinions on it are far from settled yet.
The biggest surprise of the hardware reveal was the fact that there are two models. One comes with an Ultra HD Blu-Ray disc drive, while the other is digital-only, meaning you need to download any and all games from the PlayStation Store. The latter of course looks a little slimmer, and will probably shave a bit off the price – unless it sports more onboard storage to compensate for the inability to handle physical discs.
Sony also gave a glimpse of a range of accessories, all with the same two-tone design language. There’s a DualSense Charging Station that can charge two controllers at once, a HD camera – which may be a hint at a PSVR upgrade – a Pulse 3D Wireless Headset, and a Media Remote.
The actual console reveal came at the very end of a 70-odd-minute presentation. The meat of the show was the games, and in that regard it didn’t disappoint. Sony’s in-house developers have been very busy under the PlayStation Studios banner, creating some enticing exclusives. On top of that were plenty of big-hitting third-party reveals, and some interesting indie titles.
Among the PS5 exclusives are sequels to some of the PS4’s biggest hits, like Insomniac’s Spider Man and Guerilla’s Horizon: Zero Dawn. In the new Spider Man, Peter Parker steps aside to give Miles Morales a shot as the webslinger. Meanwhile, Horizon: Forbidden West continues Aloy’s fight against corrupted robots, a thousand years in the future.
There’s also a brand new Ratchet & Clank called Rift Apart, Gran Turismo 7, a remaster of Demon’s Souls, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure, starring the little voodoo doll guy from the LittleBigPlanet series.
All of the above will only be found on PlayStation 5, which makes for a pretty solid exclusives list. And then there are those like Hitman 3 and Resident Evil Village, which were revealed here but will also come to Xbox Series X and PC.
Endearing indie games were peppered throughout, too. Highlights include the long-awaited Oddworld Soulstorm, and a game called Stray, where players take the role of a cat wandering a cyberpunk city populated entirely by robots, after humans have apparently all died out. Color us intrigued.
The PlayStation 5 is due to launch this holiday season, although we still don’t have a set date or even a price. You can check out the hardware reveal in the video below, along with announcement trailers for Horizon Forbidden West, Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Resident Evil Village.
Source: PlayStation blog