Sony PlayStation CEO Offers Insight On PS5 Speedy SSD And 4K 120Hz Output

Sony has made it clear that the PlayStation 5 is on the way, and it has offered up more details on this console that it did on its predecessors in this stage of development Sony has teased game load times between console generations, with the PS5 blowing the existing PS4 Pro out of the water. Sony is also touting the big focus on multiplayer games and not losing all your friends and progress with the move to a new console. Jim Ryan is the new CEO of PlayStation as of April, and he has given his first interview since taking the position and offered up details on the next-gen console.

Ryan wants to put an end to leaving all your old games and progress behind when you move to a new console. The executive talks about "cross-generational play" that will allow players to play a game on their PS4 and then move to the PS5 and continue that progress. Essentially, it won't matter to Sony servers what console hardware the player is on.

"Whether it's backwards compatibility or the possibility of cross-generational play, we'll be able to transition that community to next-gen," Ryan said. "It won't be a binary choice about whether you have to be either on PlayStation 4 or next-gen to continue your friendship."

Ryan also talked about the depth of Sony's PlayStation user base noting that it has an active user base of 94 million players, 36 million of those users subscribe to the $10 monthly PlayStation Plus online game service. Ryan also talked up some of the hardware of the upcoming PS5 console noting that a custom-designed Sony SSD storage drive will be offered as part of the base version of the new console. In other words, we can say goodbye to relatively slow HDD storage for consoles -- at least on the Sony side o the equation.

The console will also support ultra-high definition 4K visuals at 120Hz, which is twice the screen refresh rate of most TVs. Ryan declined to give more details on the next-gen console but noted that Sony would discuss the new console as dev versions are sent to outside game companies. We already know that the console will feature an AMD Zen 2-based Ryzen 3000 octa-core processor along with Radeon Navi-based graphics. Sony has previously said that the console is capable of outputting at up to 8K, but we have doubts that this capability will extend to games.