Sony may be struggling to keep up with demand for the PlayStation 5, but apparently it hasn’t stopped the company’s hardware team working on a new model complete with an updated processor.
News of the new model emerged from DigiTimes, via VGC, who pointed to the supply chain and in particular manufacturer TSMC as preparing for production. However, we won’t see this revised PS5 console start rolling off the production line until either the second or third quarter of 2022.
There’s not much detail on what we can expect beyond a new version of the AMD Zen 2 processor manufactured using a 6nm process. The chip used in all PS5 consoles today is a 7nm part, so the move to 6nm should bring with it a small performance gain/power saving. It’s also thought to include some further customization, although it will still have to remain fully-compatible with the existing chip.
Console hardware revisions are common and offer the chance to improve the design and fix problems, but they can also lead to lower manufacturing costs. We’ve seen Sony do this with all previous PlayStation consoles, and it’s good to see it happening so early for the PS5, assuming this news turns out to be true. The PS5 is a huge console, and although next year’s revision is unlikely to change that, continually tweaking the hardware could one day give us a PS5 Slim with a much smaller footprint.
Meanwhile, we’ve learned today that regardless of hardware revisions, Microsoft has never managed to make a profit from selling an Xbox console. That’s 20 years of loss-making hardware for the company.
