I feel like the little PS5 spec reveal has actually made it more frustrating to talk about the specs since they didn't give any hard numbers and we don't know much more about the strategy and goals for the hardware aside from an SSD and some sort of raytracing support.
I feel the complete opposite. i dont think they have played all their cards just yet, but a lot of what they talked about gave us a clearer picture of what they want from a next gen console.
SSDs are expensive. Even if the prices crash next year, they wouldve placed the orders already. they decided on the SSD because they didnt want to go with an underpowered $399 console. To me, the inclusion of the SSD and bigging it up pretty much confirms a $499 monster.
And secondly, the mention of ray tracing. everyone seems to be be very hesitant on calling it hardware based ray tracing and yet i am like why else would he mention it in such great detail if it wasnt hardware based? ANY GPU, even the ps4 GPU can do ray tracing. if we follow the logic, he is clearly talking about hardware based ray tracing. the naughty dog dev reached that conclusion immediately before sony ninjas got to him, but thats pretty much the only logical explanation.
if you add an SSD and dedicated RTX cores, you are looking at a $499 console. if you are looking at a $499 console, you can assume that we will have some kind of vapor chamber cooling. if you can assume that, you can assume a 12+ tflops monster.
Lastly, the mention of 3D audio sealed it for me. When it comes to consoles, every dollar matters. we saw this with the PS Vita where they shockingly decided not to include any SD cards to make sure they hit the $250 price tag. we saw this with the PS4 Pro when once again, they omitted a 4k bluray drive despite it being only $15 more expensive than a regular bluray drive. do we really think they would go through the trouble of adding a dedicated audio chip on the motherboard if they didnt have the budget to play around with? both in terms of space on the mobo and the overall cost. Even if that chip only adds $10 to the BoM, they are looking at a $100 million loss on the first 10 million consoles sold in the first year.
TLDR; SSD+RTX cores+3DAudio=$500 monster. Cerny gave us all the clues.
