We've long been waiting for it: the first tease of the Sony PS5's specs, which was supposed to happen at the Global Developers Conference (GDC) but, of course, didn't due to cancellation as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Given that cancellation, this felt like a conference like no other. Mark Cerny, PlayStation 5 lead system architect, took to an imaginary stage. Despite all our excitement - and we're still excited - here's why it was a console teaser unlike any other.

Was that audience even real?

Ok, we know we've fallen on world-changing times and didn't expect there to be an audience. But with five silhouettes in front of Cerny, people were quick to take to social media to query their reality.

Are they actual people, cardboard cutouts, robots with programmed motion? Nope, we think they're CGI renders. This is a presentation about computational and graphical power, after all.

Why that Vaio laptop?

Once upon a time, Sony had a laptop branch, making products under the Vaio brand. But that died some years ago. Granted, Vaio returned in new form, but Sony no longer owns it. Plus it runs Windows, which, you know, is a Microsoft product, as if Xbox is semi trolling here. We jest.

No games, no hardware

Cerny said it from the very off: this conference was all about specification and what will be possible. But delivered in a quiet, ASMR-like way, this lullaby - complete with whispered brain-bending acronyms aplenty - was mesmerising. Because, really, all we wanted was to see what this next-gen PlayStation will look like. And what titles will look like running on it!

'Almost all' PS4 titles backward-compatible

"Almost all" the top 100 PS4 titles will be playable on PS5. Hold up, it's not 100 per cent? Apparently not. Sad face.

10.28 Teraflops… isn't 12 Teraflops

After a lot of talk, bigging up the potential of the PS5's internals, Cerny arrived at a 10.28 Teraflops figure. That's pretty great, right? Well, yes, but it's not the 12 Teraflops that Xbox announced, um, quite some time ago. And in the spec-obsessed world, that's going to garner a lot of attention from gamers, no doubt.

In summary: We're still excited

But don't let all that distract you. Ultimately the PS5 will be an exciting piece of hardware. We've not mentioned the custom SSD, which will aim to be 100x faster to load than existing hardware - almost eliminating load times - as one such example.

There will be stacks of additional exciting stuff - but we'll have to wait a little longer until we get to see the console itself, and the games in all their glory.

Take a closer look at our feature about all the good stuff: PS5 specs, release date, controller and more: All the latest PlayStation 5 details