During Sony’s Corporate Strategy Meeting hosted in Tokyo, President and Chief Executive Officer Kenichiro Yoshida talked about the future of PlayStation, including the next generation console.
Yoshida-san mentioned the already-known figure of 96.8 million units PS4 units shipped as of March 31, 2019, and we learn that PlayStation Network reached 94 million monthly active users.
Sony expects to break 100 million PS4 units shipped in the current fiscal year.
Yoshida-san described the future direction of PlayStation with two keywords, “immersive” and “seamless,” indicating is the ability to play at any time and anywhere without disruption.
Providing an immersive gaming experience is one of the key aspects Sony has worked to ensure over the generations, and they’re just as dedicated to delivering that immersive experience on the next-gen console currently in development.
While Yoshida-san didn’t yet provide an official name for the new console he mentioned that the tFLOPS computational power will be further improved and the graphics rendering speed will be “dramatically increased” through the employment of customized ultra-fast broadband SSD.
The audience was shown a demo video that showcased a comparison between PS4 Pro and the next-gen console. Loading a scene takes about 8 seconds on PS4 Pro, while the new console takes 0.8 seconds.
While on PS4 Pro Spider-Man in Marvel’s Spider-Man needs to have his speed limited to allow the console to keep up with loading textures and models, while on the new console he can move around without such limitation. The demo was created in only two weeks using assets from the game.
According to Yoshida-san, the “extraordinary improvement in rendering speed” demonstrates why it makes sense to have a next-generation console since the experience will “greatly exceed” what is possible on PS4 and PS4 Pro.
Sony is planning “many other features” for the next-gen console on top of this, and they believe that the console will make PlayStation the “best place to play.”
Yoshida-san then moved on to explain the keyword “seamless” mentioning that users will be able to bring their games from a TV to any other place and continue to play anytime and anywhere without feeling stress.
Thanks to the improvement of technology, seamless experiences are more of a reality than ever before. Remote Play and PlayStation Now have been introduced as “PlayStation Streaming.”
Remote Play has been improved considerably over the past few years and Sony plans to implement it on a variety of Android devices going forward. It will be included within the features of the next-generation console as well. Over the next few months
Speaking of PlayStation Now, Sony plans to use it to increase the addressable market for PlayStation whether potential users own a PlayStation console or not.
While operating PlayStation Now Sony has learned three things:
A streaming service can provide value to gamers by enabling them to play anytime and anywhere on a variety of devices. To achieve that it’s necessary to improve the network tech. Sony has verified that gamers do see value in the service and accumulated tech to minimize latency. They will continue to do so in the future.
More value has been created for users by enabling them to test and discover many games.
Thirdly, Sony has learned about the games that should be made available on PlayStation Now, and what kind of titles fit the interest of people who use this kind of service. They intend to strengthen the content catalog including AAA titles.
The company plans to “continue to improve the user experience on PlayStation by leveraging the latest computing, streaming, cloud, and 5G technology.”
Yoshida-san briefly mentioned the recently-announced collaboration with Microsoft, and in addition to that, Sony will further invest to strengthen its first-party content IP on top of maintaining and improving a relationship of trust with third-party developers with the goal of continuing to pursue the mission of PlayStation, which is to be the “best place to play.”
