PlayStation is preparing two consoles to start the new generation with a bang. Another leak about the PS6 Canis has appeared.
In recent weeks, there have been more and more specific leaks regarding PlayStation 6 and it looks like Sony is really preparing the new generation on a grand scale. The latest information suggests that the Japanese are planning not one, but two consoles – the classic PS6 and a full-fledged portable device, which operates internally under the codename Canis.
Current reports indicate that the basic PS6 console is to be codenamed Orion, while Canis will be a native Sony handheld, not a streaming addition in the style of PlayStation Portal. Both devices will use the AMD Zen 6 and RDNA 5 architecture, which clearly shows that we are talking about very modern equipment. In the case of Canis, the leaks mention Zen 6c cores, 16 GB of LPDDR5X memory and full backward compatibility with PS5 and PS4 games.
However, the key element of the whole puzzle is the Power Saver Mode with PS5. According to previous information, Sony is pushing developers hard to support low power mode… and not by simply lowering the frame rate to 30 FPS. The company has expected that games will maintain 60 FPS, at the expense of resolution and CPU load. Today it seems that this is not a coincidence, but a long-term strategy for a future device.
The famous leaker Moore’s Law is Dead revealed today new details that shed a completely different light on the case. In the latest episode, Broken Silicon claims that Sony… patched all PS5 SDKs up to version 1.0, just to add Power Saver Mode support – even though the development kits are currently on version 12.0. According to the source, Sony did not do this even with PS5 Pro, which clearly shows the scale of priorities.
The leaker quotes a document on CPU optimization, which contains a very telling sentence: “New operating modes may be supported in the future, and applications can run in environments with different available CPU configurations.”
In practice, this means one thing – games are to be ready to run on up to 8 CPU threads, and developers “they cannot assume that the number of threads will always be the same”. As Moore’s Law is Dead adds, its source emphasized that Sony directly informs the studios that this work is to support new CPU architectures.
Sony has just patched all of its PS5 game development SDKs up to version 1.0 to support Power Saver Mode. To be clear, they didn’t even do this for PS5 Pro. This means that Power Saver Mode is more important to them than Pro. (…) The documents directly suggest that games should run on 8 CPU threads. Sony is definitely preparing the Canis handheld.
If this information is confirmed, it means that Sony wants to create one common point of compatibility – low power mode on PS5 – thanks to which games will be able to run on the portable PS6 without the need to separately, expensively port each production. For PlayStation gamers, this is extremely important news: PS6 Canis would not be a curiosity, but a real, full-fledged next-generation element, capable of running large games from PS5.
