Sony Plans to Launch PlayStation 5 for Next Year’s Holiday Season
The highly anticipated next-generation PlayStation will go on sale in time for the holiday season next year.
(Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp.’s highly anticipated next-generation PlayStation will go on sale in time for the holiday season next year.
The PlayStation 5 will come with a high-speed solid state drive, Ryzen processor and Radeon graphics cards from Advanced Micro Devices Inc., 8K resolution video and a unit for processing 3D audio, the company said in a release on Tuesday. The new gaming console will sport a controller equipped with improved physical feedback technology to convey a variety of sensations, and can also adjust the resistance of triggers to mimic the sensation of drawing a bow or revving an off-road vehicle through rocky terrain.
Sony has sold more than 100 million units of the PlayStation 4 as of June and aims to move almost 12 million more by March 2020. It’s on track to become the company’s best-selling console after the PS2, of which Sony has sold more than 155 million units. But the next iteration of the device may also be the last, as faster internet speeds are making it possible to play games on remote servers without a local device.
In the 25 years since the original PlayStation debuted, games have grown in importance for Sony while its once-famed Walkman, Xperia and Bravia brands waned. To ensure the business survives the transition to cloud gaming, Sony has partnered with Microsoft Corp. This month, it cut the price of its PlayStation Now video game service in half, to $9.99 a month, reflecting increasing competition in online offerings. Apple Inc. introduced its Arcade service in September at a monthly price of $4.99 and Google has a $9.99-a-month Stadia product.
To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at echan273@bloomberg.net, Vlad Savov
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