The PlayStation 5 is now available in North America, Japan and more select countries
Worldwide release coming in one week for the PS quintuple ballin'
The video game industry is now stepping both feet into the realm of next generation hardware to signal in the dawn of a new era with much fewer load times.
Sony's PlayStation 5 is now officially available in select countries and territories, and while pre-orders may have disappeared faster than one's life bar after getting hit by Karin's Critical Art in Street Fighter 5, there's still a few opportunities left to try and buy one today.
Unlike Microsoft's launch plan to hit worldwide on the same day with the Xbox Series X|S, the PS5 is currently only for sale in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea.
The entirety of Europe and the rest of the globe will receive the console next week on November 19.
One of the biggest advancements the PS5 boasts outside of traditional power jumps in hardware is the inclusion of a super-fast solid-state drive aimed at cutting down loading and wait times in titles built to take advantage of it.
These speed upgrades can also help boost performance in PS4 games as well through backwards compatibility to reduce load times, as has been reported for Street Fighter 5, along with better graphical fidelity and frame rate available as well though it'll vary from game to game.
The surprising stand-out star of the show may actually be the new DualSense controller that many reviewers regard as just as if not more impressive than the console itself in terms of how we interact with games going forward.
DualSense appears to combine the Nintendo Switch's HD rumble and Microsoft's haptic triggers while giving them more features and possibilities like the ability to add resistance to the L2/R2 buttons.
This change won't exactly impact fighting game players still using their arcade sticks, which your old PS4 sticks will carry over to the PS5, perhaps we could see some developers experiment with adding different forms of subtle rumble that could feel different depending on hits or blocks.
While there's no new fighting games to play at launch for next gen on either fence, you should be able to pop in any PS4 fighter you have lying around with the backwards compatibility.
In less than one week, however, Mortal Kombat 11: Ultimate will be hitting digital storefronts promising faster load times, better graphics and effects plus cross-generational play on top of cross-platform play.
Guilty Gear Strive will be coming to PS5 next April as well as another cross-generational fighter, and both games will offer free upgrades from their PS4 counterparts to boot.
PS5 pre-orders did essentially sell out in seconds each time it briefly became available, but more stores are going to offer another chance to score one throughout launch day though only online because there's nothing going to store shelves at this time.
Walmart has designated four times it plans to re-stock the PS5 today at 9 a.m., 12, 3 and 6 p.m. PT though you may have to wait some time for it to ship out.
You can also follow pages like Wario64 to stay up to date on when new units go on sale and inevitably sell out.
The PS5 offers two different SKUs with the standard version being available for $499.99 USD while the disc-less Digital Edition is $399.99.
If you managed to scoop one of these towering monoliths, let us know which games you plan on playing first in the comments.
