Disappointing reveal overall.
I thought the chances of PS1-3 backwards compatibility where slim to none. PS3 architecture was a bit of a mess and probably isn't the easiest thing to emulate. PS1-2 are probably more trivial, but I think backwards compatibility is one of those features a lot of people clamor for and never use. Because of price expectations of retro titles and the licensing effort required in a lot of them, I'm sure there isn't a lot of profitability to be had. What is disappointing is the limited backwards compatibility. I thought the idea of getting rid of Crazy Ken for Cerny was to have a sound architectural plan to have backwards compatibility moving forward. It's part of the reason I accepted the lack of backwards compatibility when the PS4 launched. My secret hope was that Sony had contracted Blue Point to help with their backward compatibility solution and that we'd get native enhancements to PS4 games on PS5 similar to what we saw Microsoft due with the Xbox One X and Xbox 360 titles.
Sony seems all in on their storage solution. It sounds impressive and it's great that they had the foresight to let us use 3rd party drives to expand storage in the future. I do worry about how advantageous this will be. Sony first part titles and some exclusive are sure to take advantage of the speed, but the majority of games are developed to be multi-platform. We'll probably see improved load times in those titles but I don't think anyone will be able to level design around these improved IO speeds when they are developing for more than just the PS5. For the most part, it seems like this solution will be a QOL feature (load times) over anything revolutionary.
The gap in performance on paper between PS5 and the competition seems rather large. Maybe that let's Sony price their system $100 less than the Series X, but I'd guess their custom storage solution probably takes up the bulk, if not more, of offering the less powerful system. I guess we'll see when the prices are announced. I'm guessing we are looking at $500-600 consoles from both camps.
The RAM in both systems is disappointing. I wonder if we are looking at mid generation refreshes again.
Nice to hear mark touch on the the inadequacies (noise) of the cooling solutions in PS4/PS4 Pro. Hopefully they are engineering something better for PS5.
Also nice to hear about a focus on audio. I think that's especially important if Sony continues down the path of VR. I'm over the days of complex speaker setups but any benefits to headphone user are appreciated.
To circle back to backward compatibility, it seems wholly inadequate and oddly rushed. It's probably too late in the game, but with what Microsoft showed and the world's manufacturing reduced to a crawl because of COVID-19, I kind of wish Sony would have taken a step back, rethought some of their choices and delayed launch a year. I read a comment somewhere that it feels like boost mode in PS5 is reactionary and trying to make the gap in performance between the two next generation console seem lessened and that feels right.
If I weren't so tied into the Playstation ecosystem and if the Xbox user experience weren't so terrible, I'd probably switch camps or at least be multi-platform out of the gate. I'm certainly concerned about investing heavily into non-exclusive titles on PlayStation like I did this generation.