PlayStation 5 priced at $399 & $499, but it won't see a cohesive global launch

While competing console maker Microsoft had its hand somewhat forced by leaking ahead of schedule, PlayStation has had the luxury of taking its sweet time sharing those same details with the world.

Now, less than two months before the PS5’s freshly announced November 12 launch today’s big PlayStation showcase has finally detailed those long sought-after specifics for the next generation PlayStation console.

However, while the console is launching on November 12 in the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.Those outside of the listed countries will be forced to wait until November 19.

In a slightly similar vein to Microsoft, Sony is offering two separate versions of the PlayStation 5, each with their own price tag: a $499.99 standard PlayStation 5 and a $399.99 all-digital PlayStation 5. While the Xbox Series S and X offer differences in performance on top of differences in physical disc support, the two different PlayStation 5 versions are essentially the same device outside of the cheaper model’s lack of a disc drive.

PlayStation said in a tweet that "pre-orders will be available starting as early as tomorrow at select retailers."

During the 40 minute long broadcast, PlayStation offered a look at what new games we can expect for the towering next-gen entry, after having previously explored the console’s hardware specs back in a March 2020 deep dive. 

For a refresher, the PlayStation 5 boasts a an eight-core 3.5GHz AMD Zen 2 CPO, a custom AMD RDNA 2 GPU that features 35 units at 2.23 GHz, and a custom 825 GB SSD. That SSD has been one of the big selling points Sony has endeavored to highlight as we approach the next-gen launch, with the company saying that the tech behind that drive enables devs to develop and design games without needing to carefully mask loading screens.

"It'd means the game boots in a second. There are no load screens. The game just fades down while loading a half dozen gigabytes, and then fades back up again. The same for your reload: you're immediately back in the action after you die. While fast travel becomes so fast it's blink-and-you-miss it," explained system architect Mark Cerny in that previous deep dive.