DF Weekly: the new PS5 may not be so 'Slim' after all
Console leaks are returning with a vengeance.
I'd thought that the era of console leaks was over and that the platform holders had battened down the hatches to minimise the flow of unauthorised information to little more than a trickle of unreliable hearsay, but it's looking like Sony in particular may have a problem. The evidence suggests that imagery and even a video of the second generation revision of the PlayStation 5 has reached the public. The circumstances aren't quite as spectacularly unlikely as the PS3 Slim's unofficial debut in a Philippines marketplace a month before its actual unveiling at Gamescom 2009, but the story is intriguing nonetheless.
We'll need to come up with a new name for the console as the unofficial 'Slim' branding looks to be off-beam. An image based on a Chinese forum, backed up by video from another source shows a machine that seems to have much the same girth as the existing console. However, unless the human hand shown in the video is much smaller than the average - and that the dimensions of a Blu-ray disc haven't changed (!), the so-called CFI-2000 model PlayStation 5 does seem to be significantly shorter, described from the machine in its vertical configuration. The video seems to be a mere shell only, however, with no innards.
Side-slashes on the unit point to the plate design of the PS5 changing dramatically and the suggestion is that the the lower part of the unit breaks away, perhaps validating Tom Henderson's initial leak of a new PlayStation 5 with a detachable optical drive. With that in mind, it would make sense the the plate on the opposite side can also be removed, perhaps for access to the M.2 expansion bay. Are these leaks genuine? As best as I can tell, the static image and the video do seem to come from two separate sources and the design does seem to corroborate the idea of a unit with an optional/detachable drive. Of course, here's still an element of doubt and this might just be an elaborate conspiracy, but the odds are starting to look favourable for this one.
- 00:00:00 Introduction
- 00:03:36 News 01: Red Dead Redemption ports announced
- 00:20:04 News 02: Mark Cerny on PS5 Dolby Atmos
- 00:34:00 News 03: Revised PS5 model appears in apparent leaks
- 00:48:53 News 04: RDNA 4 to skip high-end GPUs?
- 01:11:35 News 05: Sony starts testing PS5 cloud streaming
- 01:20:16 News 06: Quake 2 remaster released!
- 01:30:56 News 07: RetroTink 4K: John's impressions
- 01:42:41 Supporter Q1: Has John recovered from Sonic 2006 yet?
- 01:47:27 Supporter Q2: With limited competition and a lucrative server market, will Nvidia GPUs become a worse gaming value in the future?
- 01:54:48 Supporter Q3: Why are PC game frame-rate limiters often so poor?
- 02:04:38 Supporter Q4: Could older 3D games prove unsuitable for ray tracing upgrades?
- 02:11:40 Supporter Q5: Given that DLSS 3 works best at high frame-rates, might it prove unsuitable for a hypothetical Switch 2?
- 02:15:47 Supporter Q6: Rich is in the credits for Panzer Dragoon Saga! Is anyone else at DF in a game's credits?
So what are the ramifications of this leak, assuming it pans out? Going back to the story's origins, it would mean that Tom Henderson's source is on the money and is not just a one-trick pony. The Project Q handheld was a Henderson scoop, with the detachable drive rendition of the PS5 also revealed months ago. Since then, Henderson has posted initial specs for a PS5 Pro and revealed details behind PS5's cloud system, dubbed Project Chronos. We talk about the latter point in this week's Direct. Henderson's latest exclusive essentially details a highly ambitious cloud server set-up that delivers a mass storage set-up with bandwidth and latency characteristics to match the internal SSD each and every PS5 ships with. This is one of the biggest logistical challenges Sony would face in taking PS5 games into the cloud - and this solution is eminently plausible (plus: who'd think to leak info like this anyway?).
Worrying for Sony, perhaps, is how far in advance the leaked information is becoming. The platform holder will have started to brief developers and publishers on the PS5 Pro, but as far as I'm aware, the specs are not available on Sony's developer portal (compare and contrast with PSVR2, which was - and early too). Meanwhile, it's unlikely that the specific cloud information that was leaked would have come from anybody other than a member of Sony personnel intimately familiar with the firm's hardware projects. Leaks like these set the ball rolling and add further credence to subsenquent rumours - like the CFI-2000 image and video that appeared last week on Twitter.
All of which raises the question: what's happened to the concept of the 'slim' console? If this leak turns out to be the real thing, it may well be using the same 6nm revision of the PS5 APU found in the CFI-1200 series consoles, with Sony banking the existing power savings and lower heat output to produce a physically smaller machine. Any kind of reduction in weight and form factor automatically offers a big bunch of savings in terms of manufacture and shipping. Why make the BD drive detachable? Right now, Sony creates disc and digital editions of the console - unifying under a single model that serves both markets is another cost saving.
But for me, the biggest issue is how Sony would market a PS5 with a detachable/optional optical drive. Will it stick with the existing strategy of producing both disc and digital editions? Will the BD drive become fully optional in order to drive costs down? And if so, how much will the drive cost to buy? More to the point, how many will Sony produce? That's the thing about leaks - they always lack nuance and in a worst-case scenario, a PlayStation 5 with an optional BD drive may be Sony's way of effectively putting the physical market on notice. The rumours seem to be aligning on a September release and I'm really looking forward to hearing the full pitch - and going hands-on with the actual product.