The India price for the PS5 was announced back in October 2020.
The PS5 launched globally on November 19, 2020.
India was said to have a late 2020 launch date for the PS5, but alas, the year has ended.
Considered one of the hottest pieces of technology, the PS5 is like a unicorn. We believe it exists, but are yet to see one in person. Well, this is true for most mere mortals in India. We have our hands on one, and you can check out our impressions of the console here. Nonetheless, the PS5 is scarce globally and has sold out everywhere, mostly thanks to scalpers. The console doesn’t have a release date in India. So, with 2020 coming to an end, and the PS5 still not on the horizon, here is a look back at 2020 where Sony kept us on the edge of our seat with some great games for the PS4 and trickled information about the PS5 that kept us wanting more.
It's called the PlayStation 5
In August 2019, Wired published an exclusive interview with PlayStation 5 Lead System Architect, Mark Cerny where Cerny spoke about the capabilities of the PS5. However, he didn’t call it the PS5 back then, but the “next-generation console”. This threw a curveball on most people's minds as to why Sony would call the console anything but the PS5. Thankfully, at CES 2020, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan took the stage and showed off the PS5 logo. That’s it. Just a logo. The PS5 logo went on to become the most popular Instagram image ever posted by a games company. That should have told us a little bit about the hype surrounding the PS5, but I think most people were more concerned with mocking Sony for replacing the 4 with a 5 in the PS5 logo. If only we’d known the tricks Sony had planned up its sleeve.
Teraflops, SSD, custom controllers, 3D Audio and more technical mumbo jumbo
Considering the pandemic that gripped the world in Q1 of 2020, radio silence was expected from Sony about a gaming console. However, we believe Sony was plotting the best way to get people excited about the PS5. Remember, up till this point all we’d seen was leaked images of a devkit. And the devkit “V” was enough to keep people guessing about the design and features of the PS5.
Fast forward to March 2020 and Mark Cerny delivered a GDC keynote which gave us our first glimpse at the features and specifications of the PS5. While the talk was for developers, we learned that the PS5 would have an insanely fast SSD albeit, with a mere 825GB of storage space, 10.2 Teraflop GPU, some custom mumbo-jumbo SSD controller, ray-tracing and backwards compatibility. Oh yes, and 3D audio. You can learn the details of the GDC talk here. While Sony may have received some backlash for keeping the talk too technical and not showing anything about the console, we did learn that the machine was quite the capable beast.
It’s no longer the DualShock, but the DualSense
Still no sign of the box or the controller, we went back to speculating what the PS5 would look like and what the new controller would be. Remember, we saw the Xbox Series X back in December 2019 and Microsoft was more than transparent with its next-gen offering. In April 2020, we saw a blog post highlighting the features, look and design of the DualSense controller. Remember, this was still COVID-19 lockdown times and the blog post didn’t do justice to a revolutionary controller. There were no hands-on or media impressions or hands-on which was strange. But then again, the console launch happened in strange times. Nonetheless, people were divided about its look and design and speculations began about what the PS5 would look like with people assuming the console would have the same black and white colour theme as the console.
This is the PS5
I think the PS5 reveal in June 2020 has to be one of the best gaming events in recent memory. Firstly, Sony didn’t let anyone know that the event would have a hardware reveal. It was one of their best-kept secrets. Secondly, they dropped it at the end just like Steve Jobs’ “One More Thing” moment. And lastly, there were 2 consoles – Disc and Digital. While the world was divided as to the design of the console, people immediately started drawing mock-ups based on the size of the USB port and inferred that the console would be way bigger than the Xbox Series X. Boy-o-boy, were they right about that!
This is how much the PS5 costs
In September 2020, Sony announced the international price of the PS5 and speculations began about the India price and launch. In October, Sony announced the 50K and 40K price tag for the disc and digital edition respectively in India, which was about expected and all eyes were on the November 19 launch of the console.
This is where the timeline gets messy. While the console did launch in the US on November 12 and internationally on November 19, India still doesn’t have a release date. We are now at the end of 2020. Amazon’s PS5 page still highlights a late 2020 launch.
When will the PS5 launch in India?
Sony has had its share of hurdles in India with the PS5 trademark, BSI certifications and more. Through all this time Sony has been quiet about the PS5 launch in India. While your guess for a release date is as good as ours, speculations do suggest a January to March (Q1) 2021 launch with limited stock. Again, we will have to wait and see when this happens. While Indian fans and gamers are outraged at the PS5 India launch situation, Microsoft launched its next-gen consoles – the Xbox Series X and Series S in India. The Series S is a real game-changer giving a gaming PC a run for its money.
Either way, with services like PlayStation Collections for the PS5 and Game Pass for the Xbox, gaming is becoming more and more accessible. As we’ve said before, this is the best time to be a gamer.
Follow Us
Sameer Mitha
Sameer Mitha lives for gaming and technology is his muse. When he isn’t busy playing with gadgets or video games he delves into the world of fantasy novels. View Full Profile
