“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.”
– An insightful Washington Post interview with Yujin Morisawa reveals that the behemoth PlayStation 5 has actually shrunk from its first concepts.
The PlayStation 5 is quite different from its predecessor and the blocky form factors of its Xbox branded competition alike, both in terms of size and shape. The console’s reveal, and subsequent realizations that the console stands at just over 15 inches tall, generated no small amount of chatter online.
In a recent Washington Post interview, senior art designer Yujin Morisawa explains how both the visually distinct design and the console’s controversial dimensions came to be, revealing in one answer that the very first sketch of the PlayStation 5 actually conceived it as an even larger device.
On the topic of the PlayStation 5’s towering sillhioutte, Morisawa says that the console is sized perfectly for what it aims to accomplish. He goes on to explain how both size and design are crucial to the PlayStation 5’s goal of a more silent game console.
“I didn’t know what to expect in the beginning. 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,” says Morisawa. “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.”
“We wanted to get it much smaller, so it’s the perfect size right now. If I made it thinner, there would be less air flow to it. It would disturb the player while they are playing. Form-factor wise, I drew a perfect line around it and tried hit the perfect size.”
There’s much more to be found in the full Washington Post story on how the distinctive–and somewhart divisive–look of the PlayStation 5 came to be, as well as an interesting look at how designers and engineers work together to design a new game console.