PS5 news: Enough AMD chips for a holiday 2020 launch; official website change makes fans jittery; superfast SSD elicits Unreal Engine rewrites

Considering recent events in regard to key PS5-related dates, there have been growing concerns among fans that Sony would no longer be able to hit the expected holiday 2020 launch date for the next-gen console. However, a report from DigiTimes has indicated that the all-important AMD processors that will be going into the PS5 consoles will soon be sent to the assemblers and that there will be increasing stock throughout June, July, and August to deal with the demand. In other words, mass production of the PS5 console appears to be full steam ahead if the reports are accurate.

This will be soothing news to fans who spotted a disconcerting change on the official US website for the PS5. For a while now, the landing page for the console has featured the logo and the simple words “launches holiday 2020”. However, the updated page now has the PS5 logo and a brief animation of the DualSense controller underneath it, and no mention of "holiday 2020". While some took this to mean the launch date was going to be delayed, most have accepted that it is a simple page update to highlight the controller.  

Expectations for the superfast SSD that the PS5 can boast of have risen thanks to comments made by Epic’s Nick Penwarden in an interview with VG24/7. The engineer made this promising statement in regard to the speeds the PS5 SSD can reach: “It’s so impactful that we’ve rewritten our core I/O subsystems for Unreal Engine with the PlayStation 5 in mind”. The I/O throughput of the PS5 SSD is a superfast 5.5 GB/s (raw) that rises to between 8 and 9 GB/s in compressed mode.

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