Sony's PlayStation 5 will come with a pre-installed packaged game that highlights and introduces all of the DualSense's new controller features.
In a recent Summer Game Fest stream, Sony and Geoff Keighley confirmed the PS5 will come with a pre-loaded game. It's not anything crazy like, say, Gran Turismo 7 or the new Ratchet and Clank game, but a smaller bit-sized experience that stars Astro,
Sony's new PlayStation robot mascot. Astro's Playroom is a quirky little game that basically teaches you how to use the PS5's new DualSense controller and shows off all its nifty new tricks. There's mini-games and areas that highlight the nuanced haptic feedback, including the tensile strength variance in trigger pulls, the new rumble tech, and even the DualSense's surprising mic feature that turns air friction into in-game functionalities as you blow into the controller.
"It's not just a tutorial demo, it's a multi-hour game and it really showcases the controller. This is a demo that's really focused on the controller, the haptics and the triggers rather than the hardware," Keighley said during the stream.
The in-game areas all reflect portions of the console. There's a world for the PS5's cooling solution that highlights the system's fans (and makes you blow into the controller to spin them), a world dedicated to CPU loads, and other areas focused on other hardware features.
Sadly we didn't get any actual new info on the PlayStation 5 during the stream. Obviously Keighley has a PS5 demo unit, but we didn't get any highlights on SSDs, CPU or GPU. Those things will come later.
Sony's PlayStation 5 will release Holiday 2020. No release date, pre-order date, or final pricing has been announced.
Check below for more specs:
PlayStation 5 specs and details:
- Custom SoC with second-gen Navi GPU, Zen 2 CPU
- 8-Core, 16-thread Zen 2 CPU at 3.5GHz
- Navi 2X GPU with 36 CUs on RDNA 2 at 2.23GHz
- Ultra-fast 825GB 12-channel PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD with up to 9GB/sec speeds
- Two SKUs: Digital-only, and standard with a disc drive
- Support for 4K 120 Hz TVs
- Ray-tracing enabled
- 8K output support (for gaming)
- Plays PS4 games, BC is on a title-to-title basis
- Separate games that ship on BD-XL Blu-ray discs
- New controller with extensive haptic and tactile feedback