The PS5’s design has proven divisive. A lot of people, myself included, can’t stand the way it looks, from its asymmetrical disc bulge to its sterile black-and-white color scheme. However, we may not be stuck with the white chassis forever, if a new piece of Sony marketing material is to be believed. An eagle-eyed employee caught a glimpse of a Sony pamphlet with a handsome red and black variant of the PS5.
Information comes from a thread on ResetEra, courtesy of gaming news site PushSquare. A user called BarrBarr got a marketing pamphlet from Sony at his job, and shared it with the ResetEra community to get their opinions. A medley of Sony gear sits front and center, including a camera, a pair of earbuds, an Xperia phone and a PS5, decked out in a black chassis with red lighting. There’s also a black-and-red controller.
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There are two schools of thought on this photo, neither one of which is particularly outlandish. The first takes the Occam’s razor approach: There’s a picture of a black-and-red PS5, so a black-and-red PS5 will be available for purchase sooner or later. We already know that the PS5 will probably have differently colored special editions down the line, and red and black are always popular shades for “gamer” gear. The only real question is whether we’ll see a black-and-red PS5 this year, to which the pamphlet says “maybe.”
The other possibility — more likely, in this writer’s opinion — is that the console’s appearance is just there to match the black-and-red color scheme of the pamphlet itself. Changing a black-and-white machine to a black-and-red machine is trivial in photo editing software, and a black/white/blue PS5 would clash horribly with a red background. Still, the PS5 is one of Sony’s most important gadgets coming out this year, and it would be worse not to include it in the picture.
There aren’t any other hints in the pamphlet itself, unfortunately, as it looks like standard retail store information. The PS5 will be in stores late this year, but we already knew that.
Sony itself hasn’t commented on the matter yet, although to be fair, there’s a lot we still don’t know about the PS5. We’re still waiting on a price and release date, so it’s perhaps not surprising that Sony hasn’t wanted to delve into alternative color schemes just yet. My gut says that if you really want a black and red PS5, you’ll have to wait another year or so, if previous PlayStation generations are anything to go by.
