It took a while, but the time has finally come: Sony is finally ready to show off the PS5 again, with a “PlayStation 5 Showcase” planned for Wednesday, September 16, 2020. The announcement was sent out via tweet on September 9th from the official PlayStation Twitter account. The tweet teased images of the PlayStation’s button iconography, as well as glimpses of the DualSense controller, before settling on a view of the console, and most importantly, the schedule and web address.
PlayStation 5 Showcase broadcasts live this Wednesday at 1pm Pacific Time: https://t.co/W4gkVp7pdv pic.twitter.com/Nn33RT0yki
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) September 12, 2020
Notably, the PlayStation 5 Showcase tweet did not mention whether or not Sony would be announcing the console’s price point or exact release date. The accompanying post on the PlayStation blog mentioned “updates on the latest titles from Worldwide Studios and [Sony’s] world-class development partners.”
The news comes just days after Microsoft finally confirmed a price and November 10th release date for its new Xbox consoles: A USD $499 for the more powerful Xbox Series X and a lower USD $299 price point for the less powerful, digital-only Xbox Series S (which had been detailed in leaks and rumors prior to the confirmation). Until that point, both companies had been dancing around the subject of pricing and release dates, seemingly wary of announcing first as the holidays drew closer. Now it’s Sony’s move to make.
That said, it’s not as if nothing is known about the console before the PlayStation 5 Showcase kicks off, not with the steady trickle of new information coming from Sony over the last few months. For example, the PS5 will come in two varieties: With and without a 4K UHD Blu-ray disc drive. The drive-less “Digital Edition” PS5 will thus be digital-only (like the Xbox Series S). It will feature very fast Solid State Drive (SSD) storage, which developers claim will make games load much faster. It’ll also be backwards compatible with “the overwhelming majority” of PS4 games (though not PS3, PS2, or PS1 titles, according to Ubisoft). The console will launch with Astro’s Playroom, though other announced PS5 titles like Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Horizon: Forbidden West, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart were not yet confirmed for a launch window release (whatever the launch window ends up being).
The PlayStation 5 Showcase will stream on September 16, 2020 at 13:00 PT (21:00 BST, September 17 05:00 JST) via Twitch and Youtube.
