For some regions, this week is finally the week that Sony’s PS5 will launch. Pre-orders directly from the company have reported to be shipping already, and it’s kind of an exciting time in general. By now you’ve probably seen at least some reviews or unboxings of the system to know it’s a big ol’ boy. It’s quite a bit larger than its predecessor, and dwarves both the Xbox Series X and especially the Series S Microsoft is releasing this week as well. Believe it or not, at one point it was actually going to be even bigger.
Talking to The Washington Post, Senior Art Director Yujin Morisawa revealed he was tasked with designing the system, and said when he sat down to actually do the design knowing what kind of space was needed for airflow and the heat sink, he actually came back with a design that was estimated to be quite a bit larger than the final product, which is crazy to think about. He said the engineering team told him it was just too big and had to do some redesigns to trim it down until getting to what we have now.
“I knew it was going to be larger because I know how much power there was going to be, so I knew how much air flow you would need and how much space for a heat sink,” he said.
“In the beginning, when I started drawing, it was much larger even though I didn’t know what engineering was going to do. It’s kind of funny that engineering actually told me it’s too big. So, I actually had to shrink it down a little bit from the first drawing.”
The PlayStation 5, when it launches on November 12th in some regions and 19th worldwide, will actually be Sony’s biggest console to date. The company also released a dedicated FAQ for all your PS5 questions, which you can read more about through here.