PS5 specs revealed, kind of...

[Lion]

They say that they are putting in a SSD to make game loading times faster.

Have you seen the price of SSD's compared to optical disc drives?
I can't imagine that any SSD on the PS5 is going to be very big capacity wise if Sony want to keep the price of the console pretty much similar to the current PS4 PRO.

Given the size of current games, you won't be able to store many on the SSD, so that will leave you to have to use a outboard USB drive, like the 8TB external HD I bought for use with my PS4 PRO.
That's going to make any loading times stay at the same level they are now, so it sort of defeats the purpose.

I don't think they have much choice. Expecations for loading times constantly get shorter, and with the proliferation of SSDs in PC, not having one in a console would have everyone asking "why!?" - I wouldn't be at all surprised if they use a relatively small NVME SSD to boot the OS (I am still surprised how slowly my PS4 boots compared to my PC) that will also house installed apps but a lower tier of storage for games, with maybe the most recently played titles cached on the SSD. An option with a 64GB NVME drive and 500GB internal HDD would not surprise me, pushing back the requirement for USB storage. Alternatively, if the whole SSD is based on older technology it can be larger for cheaper, and while not as fast as a new PC drive it will still be dramatically better than a spindle HDD.

It will allow a sleeker looking PS5 I imagine, ultimately though that usually depends on the heat sinking/ Fan needs of the CPU/GPU.

I don't get why that would make a difference?

I'd like to know how much RAM the PS5 will have, that has a bigger baring on performance on the console functionality, and since they haven't mentioned this, I still think the PS5 is some way off from being released.

While there's bound to be a target that has been communicated to people with devkits, this is likely something that can be tuned up to the last minute. I wouldn't be surprised if we see an amount that PC people would consider a relatively strange amount. Like 12GB, rather than the 16 that would normally be considered the next step up from 8 for PC

As for Overhead sound.
Dolby Atmos can be hit or miss, and to implement a overhead system properly you are going to want to be owning your own home and have a dedicated installation, it's not something a student renting a apartment is going to have, nor the vast majority of people TBH, including myself, who is a HiFi / HT tragic.......so I can't see this taking off at all, sort of like 3D gaming.

lack of adoption has never slowed down Sony implementing stuff, you gave 3D as an example, but you have a PS4 pro, so presumably you have a TV with 4K and/or HDR? Neither of those are things I have, though I do have an Atmos capable sound system. I would rather the console support it for those that have all the bells and whistles than not. It's cool knowing that if I upgrade some piece of my home AV, the console can use it. They have also discussed using raytracing tech for sound, which I think is a great idea. I don't know what that will do for Atmos, but that sort of thing should make a difference even for people with sub-par home audio. It should make a huge difference for headphones. I really look forward to see

I hope there is a new improved resolution and designed VR helmet to be released at the same time as the PS5, my 2nd generation one sits gathering dust, I don't think I've used it for nearly a year.

I was surprised to read about retaining VR HMD compatibility, as it means keeping the proprietary port in back of the console. Pleasantly surprised, as I like my PSVR. That said... they really need better controllers for it. The Move controllers are not good enough on PS4, they will be completely unacceptable going forward yet another generation.

A touchscreen DUALSHOCK hey?
Sounds nice, but upon hearing about this I'm in two minds about it, one I expect it won't be as rugged as previous DUALSHOCK [so throwing your controller in a pile of cushions in frustration will probably be out], plus I think the battery drain could be quite a bit higher than what occurs with the PS4 DUALSHOCK, so your going to be going through recharge cycles more often, which ultimately lessens the life of the rechargeable battery due to battery memory problems, result is it probably won't have as long a life.

If the screen is OLED then it shouldn't be too bad on battery life. That said, my PS4 controllers have pretty serious battery life issues at this point, so I shudder to think how rapidly these will degrade. What I would like to have seen instead is some way of attaching a cellphone to the top of the controller so you could have a more deeply encouraged/supported second screen solution.

I recently upgraded my PS3slim with a 1TB SSD for 99€, wipEout loads now in half the time it needed before
If the PS5 is designed around a SSD, it surely is way faster than a similar PC with SSD!

I hope that's true! We haven't yet seen (even on PC) games designed with SSD as an expectation/requirement so everything has used fairly conventional mechanisms for accessing stored content. My expectation here would be that it being part of the next generation of consoles as standard will make it a requirement on PC soon enough, at which point we'll see game engines start to expect it, and take better advantage. This might be something that's mutiple years further down the line but is a good forward-planning step.

I really hope they will let it come with the new 5G wifi to make it super fast in the internet section as well.

Why 5G? At that point you'd have to add a SIM card to the console, that doesn't make sense in a non-portable device. WiFi 6 makes sense for now, and I imagine (hope) newer standards get included in later versions of the console, but 5G I don't get.

a PSVR2 with AR capabilities and 4K240Hz would be very nice as well

I would be extremely surprised to see 4K/240Hz, if the current headsets are to remain compatible then it has to continue to use HDMI, and that has only just gained 4K 60Hz to my knowledge.

A PC will still be faster because you can have more than one internal SSD and far more RAM.

Consoles don't always load from storage into memory the same way as PCs do, which is why something so relatively under-specced is able to produce such good results.

The last PC I built has 3 X SSD, 2 X 2TB optical disc storage drives and 32GB RAM, plus a Nvidia GT 970 or 980 I forget, with 2GB of VRAM.
From pressing the power button to fully operational is 7 seconds.......that's the beauty of having a separate SSD used only for the OS.

if the OS SSD is separate, then there's no speed benefit in having more than one. If you were using RAID0 across the drives I could see it offering an improvement, but then it wouldn't be separate. 7 seconds is pretty damned good though. I think mine might have been that fast when it was new, but windows 10 has gotten heavier over time and it's not that quick anymore. 2GB of VRAM seems surprisingly small, my current card has 12, and I think some of the stuff out there now has 16. I don't know if Sony has to partition the memory as system/video, and if they don't then keeping a very large volume of textures in memory could further help keep loading times down, in a way that's not really even possible for PCs right now.

Well, you cannot compare a several thousand dollar PC with a 500$ console, if you really want to compare two machines, they must have the same price...and then a console will always be more powerful than a PC!

The consoles are only as cheap as they are because the hardware doesn't change for years. As I understand it, most (non-nintendo) consoles are sold at a loss at first, so that the price doesn't have to change for years even as the back-end costs come down. By the time they do, they have been profitable for long enough to offset the initial losses. Quantity discounts have to come in there somewhere too.

Even today it's impossible to build a PC for 300$ that is more powerful than a PS4!

I just tried on PCPartPicker, and you're right. But with good reason; I can't choose parts as low-spec as the PS4 itself. I had to choose a CPU and accompanying motherboard that's Ryzen based, rather than the FX based CPU of the PS4. The video card is a Radeon R7, rather than the 7870 which would be the analogue of the PS4 - so that's 2 generations later. The PS4 has 8GB of shared memory, while I had to go for 8GB on top of the video memory. Honestly though, I was still under the $300 budget until I had to add the bluray drive. But that's at retail prices. If I was buying everything wholesale and in quantities measured in millions, it would definitely cost under $300.