I'll give him benefit of the doubt, but based on all the info we have collectively, it really does sound like Microsoft may, at a minimum, possibly have a more advanced or specialized hardware solution direct from AMD for ray tracing. Taken together with AMD's press release on Xbox Series X along with Microsoft's own press release, along with Microsoft's constant message about hardware ray tracing, that's the impression I come away with.
https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/12/12/microsoft-unveils-xbox-series-x/
Sony hasn't come off quite as forthcoming in what they have on the hardware ray tracing front. I'm willing to believe Cerny when he says they have hardware ray tracing support, but it still seems as if we may not be getting the entire story. Is there any other example besides the one that people point to where Sony has talked about ray tracing? For example, in the wired article the only example cerny gives is one involving audio, nothing visual about lighting effects. In fact, his answers so far on hardware ray tracing come off a little evasive if I'm being honest. That isn't like Cerny who usually tends to go into detail about the kinds of things the hardware will be able to make possible, and he hasn't, not once, apparently gone into visual benefits of ray tracing? Only an audio example?
Take the observed confidence, for example, on their SSD solution, the same confidence cited by many users on this very forum as clear evidence that Sony must have a very advanced SSD solution (one that maybe tops what Microsoft has), and it is, quite frankly, night and day compared to what Sony has said about Ray Tracing, easily the most talked about and desired new feature in next gen consoles.
Either Sony has an entirely different hardware solution that isn't the same method AMD has gone with for RDNA2, something from an entirely different vendor, or they came up with their own hardware solution, or, the last option, they're doing ray tracing mostly via software and are just using parts of their GPU's non ray tracing specific components to help perform the operations, in other words the way you could always attempt ray tracing, but slower. You could always attempt ray tracing with existing hardware, it just wouldn't exactly produce results better than if you had specialized ray tracing hardware like what Nvidia has in their GPUs. It remains to be seen just how good AMD's ray tracing solution is also. It has to prove itself also.
Back to the possible software solution. There's a form of ray tracing even in Gears 5 currently (even on og Xbox One), as well as in some other titles. Same for VRS for example, I believe a COD title came up with their own software solution for that in their game engine, Infinite Warfare has it I think. So that time will come where Sony will get more specific about what they have going on. I highly doubt devs would waste resources on a possible slower software or shader based ray tracing solution, so this leads me to suspect that PS5, until Sony proves otherwise, possibly has no ray tracing hardware support, and will instead just blow our minds with what they can do on significantly more powerful hardware, the way their first parties always do.
I'm hoping the information dug up is outdated and not representative of the true final PS5 chip, but if this is the real thing, it's a safe bet it's not quite as advanced as the xbox series x chip. I do not believe Cerny's statements on ray tracing hardware support up to this point have been as definitive as they could have been, knowing his reputation for going into detail. He would have detailed examples by now. Why demo the SSD load, but not demo the most talked about next gen feature? Spider-Man with ray traced lighting active would have been a very nice thing to show off, and perhaps we'll get that or another title at the proper PS5 reveal.
