After many months of waiting, Sony is finally set to formally unveil the PlayStation 5.
As confirmed earlier this week, Sony will hold a livestream today, March 18th, at 12pm ET/3pm PT. In its tweet, Sony only mentions to tune in via the PlayStation Blog, although the company will, presumably, also stream the presentation on its YouTube and Twitch channels.
“PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny will provide a deep dive into PS5’s system architecture, and how it will shape the future of games,” says Sony of what will be discussed in the stream.
Given that description, it seems that this will be focused on specs and features, similar to Microsoft’s news blowout regarding its own next-generation console, the Xbox Series X, from earlier this week.
Therefore, while it’s safe to say that we’ll get a look at the PS5 box itself, it might be wise to expect few — if any — actual game announcements. Instead, it’s possible that Sony will do something similar to what it did in its exclusive first look at the PS5 to Wired last year. For its feature, Wired was shown Marvel’s Spider-Man running on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 to show how much faster the PS4 game runs on next-gen hardware.
Since there are still several months before the holidays when the PS5 is set to release, Sony may very well hold a more games-centric presentation farther down the line. On that note, though, it remains to be seen whether Sony will actually stick to that holiday 2020 launch window, given the massive global disruptions occurring due to the coronavirus pandemic.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft reiterated that the Xbox Series X is coming by the end of the year its recent batch of Series X announcements. That said, the situation surrounding COVID-19 is constantly developing and, therefore, could alter plans — especially when these major companies rely on production from a pandemic-ravaged China.
In any case, we’ll hear more of what PlayStation has to say later today.
