While PC gaming is becoming more and more popular, there are certain advantages to playing games on the PlayStation 5 console rather than on PC, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment Vice President Hideaki Nishino.
Speaking with Nikkei Asia, the SIE executive has been asked to the shift towards mobile and PC gaming, saying that if users want to play games with the same GPU performance as the PlayStation 5, they need to spend money and time to build their own systems. On the other hand, the console allows any player to enjoy games of the same technical level right out of the box. This statement sounds quite reductive, as while it’s true that PC gaming is expensive and has become even more so in the past few years with rising prices of GPUs, playing on a high-end system is not comparable to playing on a console, where many visual compromises have to be made to achieve acceptable performance. To make an example, ray tracing is barely feasible on consoles, while on PC, real-time path tracing has become a reality in titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake II.
In the same interview, the Sony Interactive Entertainment Vice President commented on the release of the new PlayStation 5 model and on the PlayStation Portal, saying these devices are being released now, in the middle of the PS5 life cycle, to increase sales in the year-end season. The release of the first games taking true advantage of the console’s capabilities, like Spider-Man 2, is also expected to boost sales.
What’s next for the PlayStation 5 in terms of hardware revisions and peripherals is not yet clear, but it’s almost certain a Pro model is in the works. Rumored to be releasing later this year, it will provide a boost to ray tracing performance, among other things.
