What was the internal code name for the PlayStation 5?

The internal code name for the PlayStation 5 was Prospero.

Prospero was an early development name associated with Sony’s next-generation console before its public identity as the PlayStation 5 was established. The name comes from Prospero, the magician and ruler in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, continuing a naming pattern linked to Shakespearean characters in Sony and AMD hardware development.

The codename belonged to the behind-the-scenes development period, so it was not used as the retail name or prominently marketed to consumers. Sony officially announced the PlayStation 5 as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in 2019, then released it in November 2020. The console introduced a custom AMD system-on-chip, a high-speed solid-state drive, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and the Tempest Engine for 3D audio.

Prospero is sometimes mixed up with Orbis, which was the widely reported codename for the PlayStation 4. Vega and Oberon were associated with other components or development references, not the canonical codename for the PS5 platform itself.