WIRED kickstarted the reveal of PlayStation 5 with an interview with Mark Cerny, the lead architect. This was the first time that any kind of information was revealed for Sony’s next console. Now, six months after its release, a new article released today discussing PlayStation 5’s success with Sony selling 7.8 million units as of March 31. This is big because it beat out PlayStation 4 during the same period which sold 7.6 million units. The WIRED article also provided a sneak peek at what’s ahead for PlayStation 5 with the Head of PlayStation Studios, Herman Hulst saying that there are more than 25 titles in development and that nearly half of them are new IPs.

Six months after launch, a new phase of PS5 games has begun: titles that are leveraging the console’s capabilities to push gaming forward like never before. https://t.co/bqd5jWc6TH

— WIRED (@WIRED) May 12, 2021

Talking about what types of games are in development, Herman Hulst says “there’s an incredible amount of variety originating from different regions. Big, small, different genres.” When the pandemic forced a lot of companies having to work from home, there were a lot of issues that came up, especially with developers. It’s kinda hard to make a game without having some of the necessary components, especially if you are crafting a narrative and using motion capture. For Guerilla Games, they made adjustments to how they work by sending recording booths to the voice actors’ homes. They also found a way to help with performance capture by utilizing a new stage that they designed themselves and strict rules so everyone was safe. Another issue that many may not think about is playtesting games. Luckily for PlayStation, their investment in cloud gaming with Gaikai and the creation of PlayStation Now has made things easier as the service has been used to help with playtesting.

Talking about the launch of PlayStation, Mark Cerny talked about how the addition of ray tracing with some of the games that launched with PS5. “That’s astonishing,” Cerny said. “I thought ray tracing was something that would be used in second-and-third-generation titles. I thought that maybe an early title might show a little bit about the potential, and it would be one of those things where you’d be wondering, as somebody involved with the creation of the hardware, was this worthwhile to be put in, given the associated cost in silicon? And to have that question answered the very first time titles were shown in public was amazing.”

This also speaks to how easy it is for developers to get things going on PlayStation 5. Recently, Mark Cerny had a developer tour virtually talking to the studios about what could be changed or adjusted to make things easier. Cernay said “the conversations can be very contentious. I actively seek out the people who will have strong opinions, who clearly lay out all the issues they’re having with the hardware, so that we can get busy thinking about how we can address those in the future.” For instance, the PS3’s architecture made it difficult for developers to get a graphics pipeline going. The PS4’s CPU wasn’t as powerful as people hoped it would be. With PlayStation 5, Cerny said that there was little pushback.