Sony says its next-gen console price will be ‘appealing to gamers’

Sony released details about its next-gen console, unofficially dubbed the “PlayStation 5“, earlier this week and while its price was not detailed in the original article, Wired senior correspondent Peter Rubin (thanks, GI.biz), has expanded on what Sony’s Mark Cerny had to say when asked for an indication of how much the PlayStation 5 might retail for.

“This didn’t make it into my PlayStation story, but given how much people are speculating about the Sony console’s price (esp given the SSD/chip combo), thought I should probably give a tiny little bit of interview transcript on it,” Rubin tweeted.

So: this didn’t make it into my PlayStation story, but given how much people are speculating about the Sony console’s price (esp given the SSD/chip combo), thought I should probably give a tiny little bit of interview transcript on it. (1/2)

— Peter Rubin (@provenself) April 16, 2019

When asked if will be “a general range of launch pricing”, Cerny said: “I believe that we will be able to release it at an SRP [suggested retail price] that will be appealing to gamers in light of its advanced feature set.”

“Meaning that it may cost a bit more but what you’re getting is well worth it?” Rubin asked, to which Cerny replied: “That’s about all I can say about it.”

While Cerny would not confirm if the system would be called the PlayStation 5 – he would only refer to it as the “next-gen console” – he did reveal the upcoming console will support backwards compatibility, as well as current PlayStation VR hardware. He also confirmed it would also have a disc drive, therefore accepting physical media, and an SSD will enable the system to load much faster than its current-gen predecessor. 8K and ray-tracing support will also be available, 3D audio, and boosted CPU and GPU, too.

“As a gamer, it’s been a little bit of a frustration that audio did not change too much between PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4,” Cerny added, reflecting on the audio capabilities of the PlayStation 4. “With the next console the dream is to show how dramatically different the audio experience can be when we apply significant amounts of hardware horsepower to it.”

While Cerny stopped short of confirming a definitive release window, he did intimate that it will not be launched in 2019.