PS5

The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced in 2019 as the successor to the PlayStation 4, the PS5 was released on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North America, and South Korea, with a worldwide release following a week later. The PS5 is part of the ninth generation of video game consoles, along with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, which were released in the same month.

The lead architect of the PlayStation console line, Mark Cerny, implemented a two-year feedback cycle after the launch of the PlayStation 4. This entailed regularly visiting Sony’s first-party developers at two-year intervals to find out what concerns they had with shortcomings in Sony’s current hardware and how such hardware could be improved in console refreshes or for the next generation. 

The DualSense wireless controller for the PlayStation 5 was revealed on April 7, 2020. It is based on the prior DualShock controller but with modifications influenced by discussions with game designers and players. The DualSense controller has adaptive triggers with haptic feedback through voice coil actuators that can change the resistance to the player as necessary, supporting experiences such as virtually drawing an arrow from a bow. The DualSense maintains the same buttons as the DualShock 4, though the “Share” button was renamed to “Create” with additional means for players to create and share content. A new built-in microphone array was added so players can speak to others using only the controller, and the included controller speaker has been improved. It has two-tone coloring, primarily white with black facing, with the black piece being easily detachable. The light bar has been moved to the sides of the touchpad. It has USB-C connectivity, a higher-rated battery, and an audio jack.

Sony’s definition of consoles as distinct generations had been widely interpreted as an era-defining shift to PS5-exclusive games that exploit the console’s capabilities instead of releasing cross-generation games that play across both PlayStation consoles. Ryan said that there should be no disappointment as the PS5 versions take advantage of the console’s advanced feature set and initially planned that PS4 versions can be freely upgraded. Few major games such as Horizon Forbidden West are developed as concurrent releases for PS4 and PS5, and Sony supports any publisher that wants to offer enhanced versions of PS4 games at no additional cost.

Sony reported total shipments of the PS5 through its fiscal quarter ending December 31, 2020, of 4.5 million units, which were similar numbers to the PS4’s launch shipments. Total shipments of PlayStation 5 reached 7.8 million by March 31, 2021, surpassing the 7.6 million units that the PlayStation 4 had shipped in its first two-quarters of release. Sony reported that as of July 18, 2021, 10 million PS5 units had been sold through, making the PlayStation 5 their fastest-selling console unit to date. The company later confirmed that by June 30, 2021, it had shipped 10.1 million consoles, indicating that nearly every shipped console had been sold as soon as it reached the market. Console shipments surpassed 13.4 million as of September 30, 2021. The company anticipated in August it has enough stock hardware to ship more than 22 million PS5 units by the end of its 2021 fiscal year in March 2022, but this was revised to 15 million units in November. Despite this, sales during the fiscal year 2022 were forecast to increase to 22.6 million units. Bloomberg News reported in January 2022 that Sony was continuing to produce the PlayStation 4 rather than discontinue it at the end of 2021 to help alleviate the shortage of PlayStation 5 while the chip shortage continued.