Sony Interactive Entertainment President & CEO Jim Ryan has officially confirmed that their next-generation console will be called PlayStation 5 and will be launching in time for Holiday 2020.
Two key innovations within the new PS5 controller were also announced. The first is haptic feedback, which is replacing the “rumble” technology found in previous generation’s controllers. With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football field. You can even get a sense for a variety of textures when running through fields of grass or plodding through mud.
The second innovation is adaptive triggers, which have been incorporated into L2 and R2 trigger buttons. Developers can program the resistance of the triggers so that you feel the tactile sensation of drawing a bow and arrow or accelerating an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain. In combination with the haptics, this can produce a powerful experience that better simulates various actions.
These innovations will add immersiveness to the gaming experience, which is already tiers above the previous generation, thanks to dramatically improve loading times which stem from ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware and a new SSD. You can read the official announcement here and learn more about the next gen improvements from Wired’s exclusive story.