UPDATE: Sony PlayStation Arabia Twitter page has confirmed the UAE prices of the new PS5 consoles. The Sony PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Digitial Edition will cost 2099 AED and 1679 AED, respectively.
Original Article
After months of waiting, Sony has finally unveiled the official pricing and release dates for the next-generation Sony PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition at the virtual PlayStation Showcase event. The new consoles are set to be released worldwide on the 19th of November 2020.
PS5 Global launch schedule: pic.twitter.com/HJU6RZTVMG
— PlayStation Europe (@PlayStationEU) September 16, 2020
As for the official pricing, the Sony PlayStation 5 with the Blue-Ray drive is set at $499 and the Sony PS5 Digital Edition costs $399. Sony intends to compete for the Xbox Series X with the standard PS5, while the digital-only PS5 will take on the Xbox Series S. While both the Xbox Series S and the Digital-only PS5 doesn’t have an optical disc drive, Sony’s console is the clear winner here when it comes to hardware specifications. Unlike the Xbox Series S which features a cut-down specification of the Xbox Series X, the Sony PS5 digital-only console has exactly the same innards as the standard PS5, sans the optical drive. However, the Xbox Series X has the upper hand when it comes to graphical performance over the standard PlayStation 5.
The Sony PlayStation 5 is powered by a custom AMD APU, featuring ZEN 2 based 8-core CPU that operates at a variable frequency up to 3.5 GHz, along with RDNA 2 based Radeon GPU, clocked up to 2.23 GHz speeds. The compute performance reaches up to 10.3 TFlops. The console features 16GB GDDR6 RAM with 448GB/s bandwidth and the internal SSD has a total capacity of 825GB with 5.5GB/s of read speeds. The standard PS5 comes with a Blue-Ray disc drive and the console has an HDMI 2.1 port and supports 4K televisions with 120Hz refresh rate. The console also packs the Tempest 3D Audio technology. Click here for more information.
As for backward compatibility, Sony had revealed that gamers would be able to play a selected bunch of classic PS4 games as a part of the PlayStation Plus subscription. The current games include God of War, Last of Us: Remastered, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, Battlefield 1, Monster Hunter World, Fallout 4, Final Fantasy XV, The Last Guardian, Ratchet and Clank, Infamous: Second Son, Days Gone, Detroit: Become Human, Bloodborne, Batman Arkham Knight, Mortal Kombat X, Persona 5, Until Dawn, and Resident Evil: Biohazard. For those waiting for more PS4 backward compatibility on PS5, Jim Ryan, the head of PlayStation, mentioned in an interview with The Washington Post, that the new PS5 is backward compatible with “99 percent” of the PS4 games tested till now. It’s just a matter of time that Sony would add more games to the backward compatibility list. Remember, Microsoft did not introduce backward compatibility of older Xbox games but had later updated the console to be able to play a large and selected number of Xbox 360 games on the Xbox One. So we expect the same from Sony’s side.
Sony also unveiled new game trailers and gameplay footage for new titles such as Deathloop: Two Birds One Stone, Devil May Cry Special Edition, Resident Evil Village, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Spiderman: Miles Morales, and more. Sony also officially unveiled a teaser trailer of God of War: Ragnarok for the PlayStation 5, and is set to release on 2021. In case you missed the event, check out the video below.
