This is it, the official launch of the PlayStation 5 is just days away. Sony has been throwing out plethora of information over the past couple of weeks in regard to the console, including how the Solid State Drive (SSD) storage expansion would be coming at a later time as opposed to the actual launch, and that it won’t support 1440p resolution. We also learned that the new price point for next-generation titles could’ve been higher than the $70 price point that we all expect now. The newest tidbit to come out is quite surprising one, as the Washington Post reports that the PlayStation 5’s original design was much bigger than the final product.
The PlayStation 5 is already a mammoth of a system, and considering that it’s roughly 16 inches tall and 10 inches wide, it’s almost inconceivable that the initial draft for the console was even larger than that. Systems Designer Yujin Morisawa spoke with the Washington Post about how he originally drafted the console before scaling it down to what it is now.
I knew it was going to be larger because I know how much power there was going to be, so I knew how much air flow you would need and how much space for a heat sink. In the beginning, when I started drawing, it was much larger even though I didn’t know what engineering was going to do. It’s kind of funny that engineering actually told me it’s too big. So, I actually had to shrink it down a little bit from the first drawing.
Ironically, the PlayStation 5’s final size ended up becoming mocked and was also the main target of internet memes for a short while, especially considering the final size of its main competition, the Xbox Series X/Series S which comes out the very same week. If Morisawa’s first draft was accepted by the engineers, we can’t even begin to imagine the ridicule that Sony and company might’ve received over it.
However, Morisawa’s design, first and last, were all for the point of ensuring that the system would be able to contain all of that power and heat while keeping the fans as quiet as possible. The fact that they were able to construct engineer all of that into this system is in itself a major accomplishment, something that has been noted by several critics in their reviews thus far. Either way, the rest of the world will be able to find out very soon when it launches later this week.
The PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition will officially launch on Thursday, November 12.