PS5 devkits out in the wild, analyst says

Sony's next-gen PlayStation 5 hardware is on the way, and first-party studios have access to devkits for the new console.

According to Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad, Sony has shipped out PS5 development kits to help power new first-party games. Sony has yet to announce anything concrete, but this move isn't actually surprising as developers play a critical role to any system's development.

As for hardware specifics, sources told TweakTown the PS5 is powered by a discrete GPU instead of an combined APU with shared CPU and graphics. The system may also leverage an 8-core Zen 2 CPU from AMD with Navi graphics technology. Despite this hardware jump, the system is likely to play all existing PS4 games and be backwards compatible with last-gen titles.

Even if we did know devkit specs, it's too early to make any real judgements as the kits are probably just scaled-down PCs at the moment. The PS5 is likely still in middling phases of development and games-makers will continually use the hardware not only to help make new games, but provide essential feedback that ultimately shapes the system over time.

We should also expect first-party devs to leverage the full might of the PS5, similar to how Microsoft's key studios pushed the Xbox One X to its limits. It would be interesting to know just how far along the PS5 is, and what kind of hardware the current iteration has...but it could definitely change.

As a result of the devkit's shifting hardware and toolsets, Sony may not release the PS5 until 2020 or thereabouts.