Sony’s PlayStation 5 has developers excited about the future of gaming

Sony’s PlayStation 5 is set to launch this holiday season, which means it’s time for gamers to get excited about specs they might not fully understand.

In the ’90s, graphical improvements made possible by new console generations were more simple to digest: Games jumped from 8-bit to 16-bit and then from 2D to 3D, with gigantic, noticeable improvements along the way. Now, the enhancements are more subtle and you need a 4K TV with the right HDR settings to even see some of them. 

So when Sony revealed the PS5’s technical innards during a jargon-heavy livestream earlier this month, it left many scratching their heads; it wasn’t exactly a consumer-friendly show. System architect Mark Cerny thoroughly laid out the console’s specs in a way that may have been more exciting to developers than someone who just wants to play Call of Duty online with their friends. To be fair, the talk was originally only intended for developers at the now-postponed Game Developers Conference, but things changed and gamers saw a broadcast they may not have totally grasped.

But even though that presentation may have been dense and tough to parse, the tech specs Cerny revealed are absolutely worth knowing if you care about video games. As such, we reached out to some game developers and asked them to break down how the PS5’s beefy specs will actually make their work easier and the next-generation of games even better. 

The SSD is the key

By now, it’s standard to expect better graphics and higher resolutions from new gaming consoles. The same is true of the PS5, as Sony’s new console packs in support for not just 4K TVs, but 8K sets, too. Those cost thousands of dollars right now, in case you didn’t know. So it might be a few years before those are affordable enough to adopt, but when they are, your PS5 will be ready to go.

Sharper graphics are nice, but the thing that has people thrilled about both the PS5 and Xbox Series X is the presence of a built-in solid state drive, or SSD. For those not in the know, this is a (relatively) new type of hard drive that’s smaller and much faster at reading data than a traditional hard disk drive, or HDD. Our friends at PCMag have a more detailed explanation of the differences between the two here, if you want that.

To hear Sony tell it, this means PS5 games will either have significantly reduced or even completely eliminated loading screens. If you’re old enough to remember when games were on cartridges and effectively had no loading times, this might be music to your ears.

High-end PCs already use this technology and PS4 owners can actually optionally install an SSD in their console right now if they want. But game developers can’t really take advantage of this performance edge if it’s not widespread in the install base.  

In an email to Mashable, Mediatonic CTO Adam Fletcher said the SSD’s addition is a huge deal for developers. The UK-based studio is currently developing Fall Guys, an extremely silly-looking multiplayer obstacle course game coming to PC and PS4 later this year.

“The SSD is a really exciting step forward as it does away with one of the biggest limiting factors in current-gen consoles,” Fletcher said. “For developers, it’ll mean having to make fewer compromises, and less smoke and mirrors to hide loading times, which ultimately will result in more immersive experiences for players.”

“For developers, it’ll mean having to make fewer compromises and less smoke and mirrors to hide loading times.”

Fletcher isn’t kidding about the “smoke and mirrors.” If you regularly play console games, you’ve probably spent untold hours watching them load the action, even if you didn’t realize it. Ever noticed when a game forces the character to walk slowly, or wait in an elevator, or stand behind a door that’s taking a suspiciously long time to open? There’s a good chance the game is actually loading the next part of the level.

Now that both the new PlayStation and Xbox consoles will ship with SSDs, developers should be able to get away with fewer of those crutches. It’s easy to imagine this helping massive open-world games like Assassin’s Creed or Spider-Man, but Fletcher said this could be a boon for just about every game.

“The great part is, unlike a lot of hardware improvements between console generations, this benefits literally every game, whether AAA or indie, as no one wants players to have to wait to get into the action,” Fletcher said.

Welcome to ray tracing

Ready to learn some more video game technobabble? I hope so because now it’s time to talk about ray tracing. This might be the biggest graphical advancement the PS5 is capable of, though some players might not even notice it. 

WIRED has a great explanation of ray tracing here, but to sum it up, ray tracing is a way for the hardware itself to more realistically simulate the way light bounces around the game world. Plenty of current games have gorgeous lighting effects, but those probably required a great deal of handcrafting on the developers’ part. In other words, it’s pre-baked, whereas ray tracing generates great lighting effects in real time.

For the handful of PC games that already support it, ray tracing can convincingly cast light and shadows on its own. But with new consoles now supporting the feature, more developers will have the ability to enable it in their games.

If nothing else, ray tracing can save a ton of time that developers would otherwise spend waiting for a scene to render so they can see how their lighting model looks in action. 

Beausoleil Samson-Guillemette of Guard Crush Games is a programmer on the upcoming Streets of Rage 4, which is a new take on the classic Sega Genesis beat-em-ups of old. In an email, Samson-Guillemette told Mashable that being able to edit things like lighting in real time is a game changer, using the studio’s own development tools as an example.

“One thing that made the development of Streets Of Rage 4 so smooth is that everything was editable [in] realtime. We didn’t have to export a map and wait to see the results of our changes,” Samson-Guillemette said. “Even when it’s only a second, it’s too much. It’s real-time or it’s not. When it is, you can fiddle with sliders, you can experiment.” 

Saving time and resources is great, but preserving artistic integrity is even better. Effective lighting can make or break the atmosphere of a scene, so the PS5’s processing power can be especially helpful to developers in that it allows them to make things look exactly how they’re mean to with as few compromises as possible.

Philip Barclay of Sabotage Studio, the developer behind indie-hit The Messenger, made that clear to us. Sabotage’s stated goal is to merge retro looks with modern niceties, so even its upcoming 2D RPG Sea of Stars can take advantage of the PS5’s features for its lighting.

“In Sea of Stars, our next project, we have a completely dynamic lighting system and this comes at a pretty hefty price on current consoles,” Barclay said. “Sacrifices need to be made to reach a comfortable frame rate. With the new hardware, the visual signature of the game likely won’t have to be compromised.”

Don’t sleep on 3D audio

Faster (or nonexistent) loading times and complex, algorithmic lighting may get the most attention when it comes to new PS5 features, but you should really keep your eyes and ears on its “Tempest” 3D audio engine.

We have our own analysis of the PS5’s fancy new audio tech over here, but the basics bear repeating: Sony has been scanning people’s ears to create several preset audio settings for the PS5. Different people hear things in slightly different ways based on the shapes of their ears and Sony wants PS5 games to sound right no matter how your ears look or what kind of speakers you use.

“Someone said that the only time you notice audio, is when it’s broken. But when it works, everything else looks more awesome.”

It sounds utterly bizarre when laid out like that, but the benefits could be huge. You may be able to locate individual raindrops around your character based purely on the sound, for example. Realistic audio can help set a scene just as much as lighting can. Samson-Guillemette noted that this is the biggest advancement in game audio in quite some time.

“It’s one of those things.. it’s not in-your-face, it doesn’t show up on screenshots. But it can really change the whole feel of your game,” Samson-Guillemette said. “Someone said that the only time you notice audio, is when it’s broken. But at the same time, when it works, everything else looks more awesome.”

Intensely detailed sound effects, more realistic lighting and lightning quick loading times might not feel as revolutionary as the jump from 2D to 3D, but they’re just a few ways the PS5 aims to push games forward. Sony’s PS5 tech reveal event may have flown over the heads of many who just wanted to know what its hot new game releases will look like, but we hope we’ve made it clear how the new console will enable developers to craft some truly stunning games. 

Just don’t be afraid to scan your ears if it comes to that.