Category: Mark Cerny

The PlayStation 4 console has led a decent and highly successful life. Released in 2014, Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) has managed to sell over 90 million units worldwide. But five years can be a long time in the videogame industry, and while there’s still life in the console, fans are eager to see what the company has in store next. Lead system architect Mark Cerny has recently been discussing the new console and the fact that the current PlayStation VR won’t get left behind in the process.

As with any new console, manufacturers are always looking to go bigger and better than before. CPU’s and GPU’s will be improved, offering more power and greater performance to visually amaze players. Talking to Wired, Cerny explained that the next PlayStation – which hasn’t got an official name yet – will feature an AMD CPU based on the company’s third-generation Ryzen chipset, with eight cores and 7nm Zen 2 microarchitecture. While the GPU will be a variant from Radeon’s Navi class, customised of course. It’ll feature ray tracing a new technique for producing lush looking computer visuals that’s started seeing support in the consumer PC industry.

As for PlayStation VR, Cerny doesn’t go into specifics when asked, simply stating: “I won’t go into the details of our VR strategy today, beyond saying that VR is very important to us and that the current PSVR headset is compatible with the new console.”

So that’s good news for current PlayStation VR owners who are keen to upgrade their console when possible, without having to worry about headset compatibility. That does leave plenty of questions unanswered, one of the main ones being what sort of improvements VR gamers might see using the more powerful console. There’s also the little matter of a PlayStation VR upgrade itself, as the headset is only a couple of years younger than the console.

At least that should mean current PlayStation VR owners should see many more years of use. SIE has yet to even specify a year for the next console’s arrival – rumours have suggested 2020 – but it has been working on it for four years so it can’t be too far away. When further details finally emerge, VRFocus will let you know.