The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, it was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North America, and South Korea, with worldwide release following a week later. The PS5 is part of the ninth generation of video game consoles, along with Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, which were released in the same month.

The base model includes an optical disc drive compatible with Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. The Digital Edition lacks this drive, allowing it to serve as a lower-cost model for those who prefer to buy games through digital download. The two variants were launched simultaneously.

The PlayStation 5’s main hardware features include a solid-state drive customized for high-speed data streaming to enable significant improvements in storage performance, an AMD GPU capable of 4K resolution display at up to 120 frames per second, hardware-accelerated ray tracing for realistic lighting and reflections, and the Tempest Engine allowing for hardware-accelerated 3D audio effects. Other features include the DualSense controller with haptic feedback and backward compatibility with the majority of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation VR games.

The internal storage of the PlayStation 5 is a custom-built 825 GB solid-state drive (667 GB available) with a 12-channel interface, achieving a raw throughput of 5.5 GB/s. This atypical drive size was found to be optimal for the 12-channel pathway rather than a more common 512 GB or 1 TB unit. With a dedicated decompression unit supporting zlib and the new Oodle Kraken data compression protocol from RAD Game Tools, the unit has a typical throughput of 8–9 GB/s. Mark Cerny stated that a fast SSD was the top request from game developers so the goal not only was to have a theoretical raw read speed 100 times faster than PS4, but to eliminate input/output (I/O) bottleneck points so the performance target could be made effective. To this end, Sony designed a custom chip with multiple coprocessors to work in unison with the flash memory controller to reduce latency and channel data more efficiently around the system. At peak, the custom unit is capable of processing up to 22 GB/s of compressible data.

Storage for games is expandable through an NVM Express (NVMe) M.2 port for solid-state storage and USB hard drives, however at launch, NVMe drives were not supported and the console will not boot if one is installed. Beta system software support for the M.2 port was released in July 2021, while full support was added in a September 2021 system update. The internal SSD is not user-serviceable, since its flash memory chips and controller are built into the PlayStation 5’s motherboard. Though game installation is mandatory, the user has some control of what to install such as only installing the multiplayer component of a game. While PlayStation 4 games can be moved between the internal SSD drive and an external drive to free up space on the SSD, PlayStation 5 games must be stored on the internal SSD to be played, and at launch could not be moved to an external storage device. An April 2021 system patch enabled users to move PlayStation 5 games to and from an external USB storage device, though the games must still reside on the internal SSD to be played.

The base version of the PlayStation 5 includes an Ultra HD Blu-ray optical drive compatible with Ultra HD Blu-ray discs, standard Blu-ray discs and DVDs. The PlayStation 5 does not support CDs and will not play 3D Blu-ray content. The choice of Ultra-HD Blu-ray as the disc medium means PlayStation 5 game discs can hold up to 100 GB of data, in contrast to PlayStation 4 games which usually came on dual-layer standard Blu-ray discs capable of holding up to 50 GB. An example of this is the title Gran Turismo 7. The PS4 version comes on 2 discs where the PS5 version comes on one.

Sony revealed the DualSense Edge, a new controller for the PlayStation 5 in August 2022. The controller will feature a more modular design than the DualSense with replaceable stick modules, multiple control profiles and an option of relocating map inputs.

Information from Wikipedia.