bitbydeath
Member
They claim that they received a photo of the dev kit before the illustrations arrived. So with that out the way, here we go.
www.gizmodo.com.au
The best photo our tipster sent isn’t much — a 33.5Kb gif that is just 238 pixels by 144 pixels. It’s been cropped and downgraded as if to remove any possible identifying details. Suffice it to say that from what we can see, the details in the photo appear identical to the registration illustrations.
The photo is taken from above at an angle as if the photographer held the camera at waist height and shot the device while standing right next to it. So the perspective is skewed, and only a portion of the device is visible. There’s a cord laying across part of the device. What immediately catches your eye is that this device has a two-tone colour job, much like PS4 developer boxes before. Much of what we see is covered in a shiny silver finish that reflects the garish overhead lights illuminating it. The parts not covered in the silver finish are covered in black plastic. The portion visible includes those five gill-like vents and that big V-shaped divot.
A second image sent by the tipster is even less legible and resembles a large black blob. The tipster said it was a photo processed with reduced colour depth and resolution to remove reflections. The resulting file is another tiny gif. The tipster advised adjusting the brightness or gamma of the image. Doing so reveals a terribly pixelated image. The words “PROTOTYPE 1 NOT FOR SALE” are visible.
Below that, there appears to be a small LED labelled “STATUS 2.” Directly beside it are three buttons or knobs. The first is labelled “STANDBY.” The labelling for the other two buttons or knobs is less legible. The one beside “STANDBY” starts with “RE.” So it possibly says “RESET” or “RECORD.” The third starts with an “EJE” and likely, spells “EJECT.” Directly below this grouping of three is what appears to be a slot for a DVD or Blu-ray.
Our tipster claims it’s (PS5) called “Prospero.”
According to our tipster, earlier PS5 prototypes have been in the hands of developers since 2018, but Prospero, the current dev console, was first delivered to developers early this winter.
One thing was clear: the future consoles will have the “greatest compute jump in any console,” they said.
In terms of graphics performance, our tipster offered fuzzy details about how each console would handle ray tracing differently, but frankly, the statements were too hard to parse, so we won’t reprint them here.
According to our tipster, Microsoft will make the camera a huge priority, while the Prospero kit uses older camera technology. (It’s worth noting that what’s in a development kit doesn’t necessarily reflect what ships in a final product.)
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s camera is allegedly capable of 4K resolution with just a two-frame latency between what is recorded and what appears on a stream. (The current Microsoft Kinect camera gets about 8ms to 10ms of latency.) The tipster claims Microsoft is showing off the capabilities of the camera using a Snapchat-like demo that changes with the in-game lighting.
This wouldn’t be a surprising move for Microsoft. The company attempted to make the camera a big part of the Xbox One. A pricey Kinect camera came bundled with every console. At the time, consumers were furious about paying for a camera that seemed unnecessary.
The streaming business has changed that, and Microsoft has been quick to recognise the value of a streaming platform to building back its market share in console gaming. The company has made considerable investments in its Twitch competitor, Mixer. Earlier this year, it lured popular Twitch streamer, Ninja, to the platform, and there have been reports of it paying streamers upwards of a $1.5 million to stream on Mixer.
A really good camera just makes sense.

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