With PlayStations 1-3, Sony developed their consoles using the same mentality. Develop entirely custom-made hardware designed to do impressive graphics and engines, use a new media format to leverage said hardware, and then use said format as a trojan horse for other types of media. The PlayStation had the CD format, along with its then impressive 3D graphics. The PlayStation 2 had the Emotion Engine combined with the DVD format, and the PlayStation 3 had its Cell processor with the Blu-Ray format. While Sony built machines with impressive tech, it often came at the cost of ease of use for developers. The PlayStation 3 in particular, was an overly complex pain in the ass to work with thanks to its completely foreign architecture, which combined with other things, resulted in its infamous $599 US Dollar launch price.

With the PlayStation 4, Sony went in with a different mindset. Instead of building a lot of impressive custom tech, they instead focused on getting the most out of cheaper, off-the-shelf hardware that was simple, and easy to use. While the PS4 was pretty run-of-the mill in terms of specs, this strategy never the less paid off, with the PS4 being far more profitable than the massive money sink the PS3 was.

Now we're at the PlayStation 5 and for this generation, Sony from what's been known so far, is going for a middle ground between the PS1-3 and the PS4 mentalities. Like the PS4, the PS5 is built on the same, off-the-shelf x86 architecture that powered its predecessor. It's cheap and its common. However, it's everything surrounding that architecture that sort of goes back to the PS1-3 era of building impressive custom technology, notably with the heavily customized SSD I/O and the Tempest 3D audio tech. It's a solid compromise between the "build the most impressive machine on the market" approach of the first 3 PlayStations, and the "lateral thinking, withered technology" approach of the PlayStation 4. But this is just my observation.

And yet Jim Ryan said games older than PS4 all suck and no one should play them. Jim Ryan wants people to pretend all old games are bad.

With PS3 they went way too far with the hardware, and with PS4 they didn't go far enough. With PS3 they went all in, and with PS4 they really held back. PS5 does look to have found that balance point in between, but we have to see how it plays out, as per how the devs take to it and what games come out of it. As of now it does seem promising.

Mind you, it's almost like they wanted to go further with the tech but held back, yet had some of that ambition leak into the aesthetic design one way or another. Compared to all other PS consoles, PS5 clearly goes far beyond what they've done with the looks of the PS1-PS4. You'd almost think a designer of modern art created it. Some quite like it, some not so much. There's always the downside if you go too far over the top.

The PS5 case design does remind me of the PS3 case design, but with a twist, literally. The twist being it's still plenty impressive while remaining affordable this time around.

I'll have to disagree here. The slight modifications the PS5 made on the architecture are not even close to the fully customized chips in the first 3 consoles. Or in other words, Sony makes their architecture sound way more outlandish than it actually is. Their SSD and Direct Storage tech is absolutely just off the shelf and any developer who has worked with the new generation of AMD and Nvidia cards will feel immediately familiar. The sound chip isn't anything special either. Will be a nice toy for sound artists to play around with, but nothing more.

Overall the PS5 is a mere small evolution of the PS4 and nothing more.

It will sell PS3 numbers count on it

Innovation isn't neccesarily a good thing. Microsoft is console is doing too many special things yet it is a vastly superior piece of hardware for the same price, with better ray tracing and VRF. Om the other hand as long as games look as good as the demon souls remake it will not probably matter too much.