PS5 news, price, release date, games and leaks: all Sony PlayStation 5 official info

We can't wait for the holiday period. Not just because we love Christmas movies, but the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will finally be available to the general public. We're particularly excited to get our hands on the PS5: as it's been shrouded in secrecy for so long, we're desperate for any information we can get on Sony's console. 

However, bit by bit, Sony has been revealing its PS5 secrets. An official PlayStation 5 event took us "under the hood" on the PS5's specs and features, livestreamed on the PlayStation Blog and YouTube. Shortly after that, Sony unveiled the DualSense, a next-generation controller with advanced features (more on those later) designed to replace Sony's tried-and-true DualShock design.

Without further ado, you can find a full rundown of what's been revealed from the Sony camp so far, followed by all the leaks, rumours and cryptic influences you've seen to date.

In the highly-anticipated PlayStation 5 reveal, lead system architect Mark Cerny took to the stage and spoke about console design. The end result was a thoroughly comprehensive breakdown of the PS5's innards, but it was mostly geared towards developers. 

This means we had no new footage, nor did we receive any new design information, not even a shot of the console. However, the game creation possibilities of the tech Cerny debuted set tongues wagging.

The number one ask by developers with PS5 was a solid state drive, and Sony delivered. Reducing "dead time", such loading screens and corridor level designs, to zero is important for Cerny's team, and the solid state drive is able to deliver. 1GB is roughly 20 seconds to load from a hard disc drive, according to Cerny. This is why load times on PS4 can be rough, while 2GB can reportedly be loaded in 0.27 seconds on an SSD. This means there will be no loading screens.

The primary reason for an ultra fast SSD, though, isn't just about loading times. It is about giving developers freedom when creating games — you don't want loading screens getting in the way of awesome virtual worlds. You also have hard limits imposed on the player in the game, who can't move faster than the HDD dictates.

SSD's improve game patch installs, too. The SSD on the PS5 is, according to Cerny, 100x faster. There is Custom Flash Controller in the PS5 to help this, to ensure no bottlenecks. Priority requests are very important in games, and this controller helps deliver these. 5.5GB/s is the bandwidth the PS5 is capable of — nice!

The Sony PS5 is going to support external hard disc drives. Cerny also confirms that the Sony PS5 will support modular M2 SSD drives, meaning people can increase their storage. These SSDs need to be as fast as the stock PS5 SSD though to work, so 5.5GB/s. M2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs are coming that support up to 7GB/s. However, Cerny says don't buy an M2 drive until later in the year to ensure compatibility. 

Graphical Processing Units, or GPUs are up next. The PS5 GPU needs to be backwards-compatible with PlayStation 4 games, which it can do thanks to some awesome work from AMD. It is a custom RDNA 2 chip from AMD, which is optimised for performance. We have our own needs for PlayStation, says Cerny, and AMD helped with this when working on PS5.

The PS5's custom chips has the logic and feature set that the PS4 and PS4 Pro used, meaning that backwards compatibility is definitely in the new console.They tested the top 100 games played on PS4 by play time and they all ran perfectly on PS5. That's great news!

The PS5 has a new Geometry Engine and inter-section engine, which is all about the PS5's ray tracing abilities. Cerny says ray tracing will be available, enhancing audio, global illumination, shadows, reflections and more. 

Speaking of audio, Cerny is all about the importance of audio in games. The goals for audio on PS5 was to create a great audio experience for all gamers, using presence and locality to place you in the game using volume changes and phase shifts. 

The PS5 is packing a custom 3D audio unit. Tempest 3D AudioTech is the official name for the idea, and the hardware is called the Tempest Engine. 

It has SPU-like architecture and GPU parallelism, meaning it can deal with complex audio processing and, crucially, can generate 3D audio affects for all gamers, regardless of how they are listening (headphones, soundbar, TV speakers etc).

For PS4 they tried to model for a worst case scenario in terms of heat and power draw. This works if the console is quiet and cool while playing, and doesn't if it is hot and loud.

On PS5 Sony has gone a different direction. It has a variable frequency strategy, which means the CPU and GPU are permanently run in boost mode, but the frequency changes. This means the power draw doesn't change, so the PS5 is always running at maximum capacity: as such, Sony doesn't need to guess at the worst case scenario in terms of power draw in games going forward.

The GPU is capped at 2.23 GHz, which translates as 10.3 teraflops of gaming power. The CPU on the PS5 is capped at 3.5GHz.

Sony PS5: DualSense controller

In April, Sony unveiled its new DualSense controller, a curved, ergonomic replacement to the classic DualShock design. The two-tone controller presumably reflects Sony's as-yet-unrevealed final PS5 design, and concept artists have been having fun creating PS5 renders that match the gamepad's slick aesthetics.

One of the controller's big USPs is the haptic feedback technology, which allows the triggers to become more or less resistant depending on which in-game tasks you're using it for. Elsewhere, the controller has been made lighter and the rechargeable battery will be able to go for longer. 

The Share button, which Microsoft has kept, has been scrapped in favour of a “Create” button. No details have been released on what the Create functionality actually does, but most pundits report it'll be an extension of the Share feature, perhaps with in-built editing tools for social gamers and streamers to take advantage of. 

A built-in microphone completes the new features, allowing you to chat to your contacts without a headset. However, it's suggested the battery will drain considerably while using the built-in mic and speaker for prolonged periods. The net is awash with great-looking mods for the new gamepads, but after seeing Sony's new design direction for the first time here, we're anxious to get a look at the accompanying console.