Sony's $499 PlayStation 5 launches November 12

A week to the day after Microsoft announced pricing for its imminent next-gen consoles, Sony struck back with firm details of its own during a digital event on Wednesday. The PlayStation 5
will cost $499, while the disc-less PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will cost $399 when they launch on November 12 in several countries. Preorders will start tomorrow at select retailers.

Microsoft’s flagship Xbox Series X will also cost $499 when it launches November 10 alongside the stripped-down $299 Xbox Series S.

The PlayStation 5 packs many of the same raw components as its rival—both consoles will offer custom AMD chips with eight Ryzen cores, Radeon GPUs infused with the company’s ray tracing-capable RDNA 2 architecture, and speedy PCIe 4 NVMe SSDs. The two consoles deploy very different graphics configurations, however. The PlayStation 5 leverages AMD’s SmartShift technology to achieve blistering 2.23GHz GPU speeds when the system can siphon energy away from the CPU. The Xbox Series X, on the other hand, runs its graphics cores at a locked 1.825GHz that’s well behind the PlayStation’s pace. Microsoft’s console packs in significantly more cores however, at 52 compute units versus Sony’s 36.

The $399 PlayStation 5 Digital Edition offers the full power of the PS5, just without a disc drive, while the Xbox Series S pares back the GPU capabilities dramatically, targeting 1440p performance instead of 4K.

:story: PCWorld