A YouTuber has offered the most in-depth look yet seen by the public at a PlayStation 5 development kit.
Macho Nacho Productions managed to get its hands on one of the elusive devices, which developer agreements have so far kept out of the public eye, beyond patent diagrams and the occasional blurry photograph.
In the video embedded below, presenter Tito Perez does not specify how he acquired the development kit, but offers a close-up view of its unique design and inputs.
Unfortunately, this particular kit does not appear to have been activated – something developers must do regularly in order to keep their dev consoles active. That means Perez is only able to show a familiar menu system and can’t boot anything up.
However, he is able to offer an in-depth look at the dev kit’s design, which is radically different from the retail machine and includes various additional ports and buttons.
Sony and other platform holders have historically been very secretive about their development consoles, which usually aren’t allowed to leave studio premises or be photographed.
Last year a pair of PS5 development kits appeared on eBay, and the listings didn’t last for more than a few hours before they were removed.
A new iteration of the PlayStation 5 was released in Australia last month, which reportedly makes the console lighter.
It’s claimed that the new CFI-1200 series models of the PS5 weigh less than the launch consoles, to the extent that the standard edition with the disc drive is now as light as the digital edition was at launch.
This is the second time the PS5 hardware has been revised to make it lighter. In July 2021 Sony rolled out its CFI-1100 series, which also weighed less than the launch versions.
During an investor call last year, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said the company was considering various solutions to help it cope with the global shortage of hardware components, including potentially altering product designs.
Last month Sony made what it called the “difficult decision” to increase the price of PS5 hardware in most major regions across the world.
Europe, Japan, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada all saw price increases of up to 12.5%, with the United States being the only major region to be spared the bump in price.