With yesterday’s reveal of the PlayStation 5, fans got their first look at the console as well as upcoming titles, and there’s a lot to digest, so let’s discuss yesterday’s showcase.

Whew… For many of us, our team included, there was a lot of information to swallow coming out of Sony’s presentation yesterday afternoon. Some of those announcements came in the shape of upcoming titles such as DEATHLOOP and Ghostwire Tokyo from Arkane Studios and Tango Gameworks, published by Bethesda, being PlayStation 5 exclusives, timed or otherwise.

We even got a first glimpse at the highly-anticipated Horizon Forbidden West, Sackboy: A Big Adventure, and now, the highly anticipated Marvel’s Spider-Man follow up, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which undoubtedly will be leaving a lot of PlayStation fans craving more when these titles begin to hit the shelves in late 2020 and throughout 2021.

But our biggest takeaway’s aren’t just the games. There’s a lot of information to digest, especially on the PlayStation 5 hardware front, which comes as a bit of a shocker and a noticeable step in both the possible cloud computing front of Hardware. So, to really get things started, let’s talk about the PlayStation 5 console editions to get us started.

The PlayStation 5 will have two models, one that’s all-digital and the other that can accept physical games

If you’re like many gamers out there, you’ve begun to go digital, snagging up what digital copies you can during those mind-blowing sales that the PlayStation Store tends to have throughout the year. Trust me, a few of us here on our team are guilty of it, which isn’t a bad thing. We’ve found comfort in the idea of how easy it is to get to gaming when we get home from work, a night out, or perhaps not waiting in lines as a midnight release for the next big hit.

Sony, in turn, is going to be catering to that crowd with the PlayStation 5. The company announced during their console reveal, which has led to some hilarious memes if you haven’t checked them out, that the console will have two editions of the exact same hardware. The console will feature a diskless all-digital console, making it so you can ONLY download games, making it so you won’t need to wait on those insane install times we are expecting to see in the very near future.

In turn, Sony has also revealed another piece of hardware beside it: The standard console, which will allow gamers to insert a game disk if they wish or go down the digital route as well. Personally, we’re all for the standard and will definitely be snagging up one when we can. Both consoles, aside from the disk drive, will have the exact same specs, making it so PlayStation 5 users will have the exact same experience across the board.

The catch? We are expecting to see a $50 to $100 price tag difference between the two as the PlayStation 5 Digital Only Edition will cut some manufacturing costs and enable a more affordable approach to next-gen gaming. So keep that in mind when you decide to start considering shopping around.

The PlayStation 5 headset and camera will seemingly be a central piece to the offerings the console will offer

Among the seemingly ‘Detroit: Become Human’ inspired aesthetic, Sony went ahead and showed off a couple of accompanying peripherals that will ship alongside the console, which include a new Media Remote, PlayStation 5 3D Wireless Headset, HD Camera for content creators and gamers alike, and of course, the docking station for up to two DualSense controllers.

Now, there are two pieces here that are extremely important and are worth discussing the most: The Headset and Camera. The reason behind this, well, you’ll be surprised to know that Sony hasn’t shied away from the fact that content creators use their console and that we truly do enjoy being able to stream without the barriers of needing a capture card, PC, and the likes.

We – content creators –  also use SharePlay, a lot, which makes it an important feature to us. So, it’s worth noting that it could also mean that Sony is gearing up for PlayStation VR support as well and that the camera could/will be a major part of that moving forward. That, however, doesn’t explain the headset does it?

Remember Mark Cerny’s reveal of how the PlayStation 5 will work and his talk about 3D and binaural audio? That’s what this headset is all about. It’s about the level of immersion that fans will want when going into next-gen gaming and being able to immerse themselves into their games even further. Now, imagine playing – literally my favorite PlayStation 4 title – Horizon Zero Dawn and wandering the Frozen Wastes DLC.

Imagine that Stormbird flying overhead or the pack of Sawtooth just ahead, imagine their mechanical parts hitting the ground, thudding with each and every step before Aloy grabs their attention by just being somewhere nearby. Instead of having that audio-based sound, one that barely gives a sense of depth to the scene before you, Sony plans on making that even more realistic, making every single sound crisp, unique, and having their own depth to them to bring the game to life in ways never-before-imagined.

That’s what will be coming forth in future games, some current-gen titles such as Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, Resident Evil VII: biohazard, Resident Evil 2 Remake, and Final Fantasy VII Remake all support binaural or 3D audio to help enhance their experiences. So it’s just a matter of time before you’ll REALLY see a headset that can take advantage of these amazing sound design elements.

The PlayStation 5 will be able to sit horizontally and not just vertically

One of the big takeaways by man fans is that the PlayStation 5 was shown standing tall on a vertical stand, allowing the white, black, with a blue LED aesthetic to stand out more than it ever would while on its side. Having taken social media to voice my concern about the inability to lay the console vertical, which I do prefer to do as I don’t have the room to stand one up (if you’ve ever seen my stream setup, you’d understand), a friend of mine, Mike Kolb, was quick to point out that I was actually wrong.

How quick was he to note it? Within minutes of the stream coming to an end, showing a quick grab where Sony shows the PlayStation 5 laying flat with a circular-like stand holding the console horizontal. Sony has also, since, released pictures of the console laying horizontal and noticeably using a stand of sorts. So it may be safe to assume that the vertical stand might be the default stand with the horizontal stand being a secondary purchase unless Sony ships it with both.

The PlayStation 5 will have a significant amount of PlayStation 4 games as well as next-gen titles at launch

One of the things we’ve talked about a lot internally among our team is just how many games will be available at launch, which even as a team, left us to discuss whether or not our outlet would get one as soon as we can (remember, we are an independent team who doesn’t get review consoles and or promotional hardware from Sony, Nintendo or Xbox, we pay for these ourselves).

However, after yesterday’s reveal, a lot of our concerns began to be pushed away. We got to see a significant amount of support in the shape of both first and third-party development studios. Sony revealed a plethora of games, including the – now – highly anticipated Demon’s Souls remake from Bluepoint, the team that helped bring Shadow of the Colossus to life on PlayStation 4.

Another big take away is that Sony has left it up to publishers and developers to ensure that their games are backward compatible or new PlayStation 5 versions of their games would launch, allowing fans to continue their adventures, keep their purchases, and seamlessly move forward without a hitch.

Now, we know there is a significant amount of game’s already moving over such as Warframe, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Final Fantasy XIV, Destiny 2 and quite possibly many others including the critically-acclaimed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, available for play when the console launches. It is worth noting, however, that Activision has NOT confirmed whether or not they will be making a patch or PS5 version of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare available at any given time, this is pure speculation on the latter part.

Regardless, it is worth noting that Sony has already revealed games such as Gran Turismo Sport and Marvel’s Spider-Man functioning on PlayStation 5, so it would be safe to bet games such as Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn, along other PlayStation 4 exclusives will function at one point or another on the PlayStation 5.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon’s Souls, and Horizon Forbidden West absolutely captivated PlayStation fans

Regardless of the event’s announcements, there were three games that stood out the most to many fans, which makes them extremely important elements to the PlayStation 5’s first-year success, which includes launch titles as well as post-launch support. While there were 26 games revealed/announced yesterday, three stood out the most to many fans, which didn’t come as a surprise based on the reaction that we saw during the stream on YouTube.

Among those announcements came Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, which will be a standalone game and will take place in the exact same universe as Marvel’s Spider-Man, which launched on PlayStation 4. While we don’t know how Miles will come into play or what has happened to Peter Parker, there’s no doubt that Miles is taking on the helm of Spider-Man in some form or another, which sets up the possibility of a Spider-Verse continuity at some point or another.

On the other hand, fans like myself, have been clamoring since the launch of the PlayStation 3 to experience Demon’s Souls once again. From Software, however, did not budge, leaving the game behind while Sony and Sony Studio Japan began to shut things down, ensuring that fans could still play the game, but without world tendency or the world tendency events that would get released from time to time.

To follow-up with their success of Shadow of the Colossus, Bluepoint revealed their next big title, which is the heaviest hitting yet by the name of Demon’s souls. While Demon’s Souls is not necessarily the one responsible for the success of the Soulsborne genre, it’s the grandfather who helped bring the genre into popularity in a dark fantasy setting.

With Bluepoint hard at work restoring the original game to next-gen standards, fans will surely be carving new paths, tearing apart every single boss they can, including that pain-in-the-arse Tower Knight who, for better or for worse, is only the start of that giant mountain top and is by far one of the easiest bosses in the game.

Following up to closure is the one that made fans lose their minds in the livestream feed: Horizon Forbidden West. This sequel will see Aloy return on her grand adventure, one where she will set forth, hunting down Sylens and HADES in what feels like an ultimate showdown, but to do so, it looks like Aloy will have to overcome obstacles in the likes of what she has yet to ever have faced.

The sequel already looks like it will be bigger, bolder, and more alive than ever before with enemies both new and old appearing in the place of ones we’ve yet to experience. Robot mammoths, alligators, and even smaller wildlife? Count us in. This will undoubtedly be another critically-acclaimed title and one that breaks even more records than before.

However, Sony hasn’t revealed a price, but we’ve got some idea of what to expect

Look, we all want a price and we all want to speculate on where to expect the price tags to be. We all are hoping that Sony does what they did before, which was release their console at $399.99, which was smart marketing as we saw the PlayStation 4 absolutely crush their competition right out the gates.

Since then, Sony has kept things comparable in price, making up for hardware cost loss through subscriptions, peripherals, games, and their PlayStation Now membership. It hasn’t hurt them as a whole and their consoles are doing damn fine because of it. If Sony follows their trend, our team has actually sat down discussing what we could expect Sony to do, making the competition for Microsoft even steeper and harder to overcome moving forward.

So what kind of price have we discussed and figured we will see Sony do? Two pricing tiers. Since we know there is an all-digital edition console, our team has figured that Sony is comfortable with their $399.99 entry price tag, which is perfect for their PlayStation 5 All-Digital console, making it an easy entry point for those wanting to keep their games digital and their clutter in their house to a minimal.

To offset the cost of a 4K UHD Bluray player, which we could see drive the cost up significantly to our next price point at $499.99, which would make sense due to the single piece of hardware requiring more manufacturing time and increased cost for implementation. Just remember, these are pure speculation and we have no idea what Sony is expected to do. Jim Ryan, the head man behind the PlayStation brand, has said they will “keep the PlayStation 5 at an affordable and valued cost”.

This means we could see the consoles go even higher, but historically speaking, it hurt the PlayStation 3 quite a bit. Regardless, we hope to hear a pricepoint soon as the Holiday 2020 is closing in rather quickly and both Sony nor Microsoft have given fans a pricepoint for next-gen consoles, which has some of us, in a slightly uncomfortable position when it comes to planning on getting one.

What has you interested in the PlayStation 5 or what do you hope to see get announced for the next-gen console? Let us know in the comments below.

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About the Writer(s):

Dustin is our native video game reviewer who has an appetite for anything that crosses the borders from across the big pond. His interest in JRPG’s, Anime, Handheld Gaming, and Pizza is insatiable. You can find him over on Twitter or Facebook where he interacts with his followers quite a bit!