Sony finally reveals PlayStation 5 hardware—and a discless “Digital Edition”

Shortly after Sony’s hour-long reveal of new video games slated to launch on PlayStation 5, the company took the wraps off of a major component of its new console: the hardware itself.

What’s more, fans learned that Sony had a secret up its sleeve on the hardware side, unannounced until today: a “Digital Edition” version of the hardware. Though the video reveal didn’t include any narration to confirm, this version of PlayStation 5 will ship without a disc drive—perhaps to drive down the console’s cost, as Microsoft attempted to do with last year’s All-Digital Xbox One S.

The console’s reveal did not include a price point or release date. This leaves us wondering exactly how much the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition might drive the price down—especially with reports suggesting that the console’s build price will be no lower than $450. Removing a Blu-ray disc drive may very well help in that respect, for those consumers who prefer buying their games digitally anyway.

As we predicted after the DualSense controller reveal from earlier this year, PlayStation 5’s design is primarily white with black accents and hints of blue LED light. Interestingly, the system in no way resembles the console’s leaked debug hardware, which sported a striking V design. Instead, this unified design is quite tall; the disc-drive slot in the standard console SKU suggests that the system as a whole is a little taller than the diameter of three Blu-ray discs, or somewhere in the range of 15 inches. Exactly how PS5’s bulk will compare to the giant brick that is Xbox Series X remains to be seen.

Other than a series of official peripherals—and Sony’s choice to reveal a media remote before a new PlayStation VR headset—this reveal didn’t show us much about the console that we didn’t already know. One exception, at least, is a peek at two front-of-console slots: one USB Type-A, one USB Type-C. The console’s front also has two tiny slots that could be anything: LEDs, expansion ports, whatever. We look forward to more information on these front-of-console ports soon, if not how its backside looks in terms of support for things like audio connections.

Update, 6pm ET: And now we know what it looks like sideways, should you be concerned about the device’s vertical orientation. Behold:

Listing image by Sony Interactive Entertainment