Sony has officially announced the release date of its next-gen console and confirmed that its name will, as expected, be PlayStation 5.

It will be available in time for Christmas 2020.

That means we'll get another ding-dong battle next year as the next console from Xbox - currently known as Project Scarlett - is also due to hit stores around the same time.

Other details have been revealed by PlayStation's lead system architect, Mark Cerny, who told Wired in an interview that ray-tracing will be supported at the hardware, not software level: "There is ray-tracing acceleration in the GPU hardware," he said.

In addition, he confirmed that the PS5 will, indeed, sport a 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray deck. At last. And, while he fell short of admitting that the next DualShock controller will support voice control (as suggested by a filed patent) he did dangle the carrot that it will add "adaptive triggers" - with increased tension depending on the game played.

There will also be haptic feedback and an improved speaker on the pad.

Wired's interview also confirms that the leaked PlayStation 5 design, as per the patent and beautifully rendered image supplied by LetsGoDigital which you can see at the top of this page, is, indeed, the devkit - as crazy as that might seem. It might not reflect the final version, however.