It's a difficult time for the games industry, with rising costs and consumers feeling the squeeze of an economy in flux, and so it's only natural to wonder how things might pan out when the PS6 release date rolls around, and how much the PlayStation 6 could cost.
With console generations typically lasting seven years, we are nearing the assumed end of the PS5's reign as the current-gen Sony affair after all, but to assume is to make a colloquialism for a donkey of 'u' and 'me', as they say, and so we'll be delving deep into when we could realistically expect the PS6 release date, and wince as we investigate how much it will be.
With Microsoft trying something new with Project Helix, we may see Sony adapt and perhaps pinch a few ideas from Nintendo along the way.
No doubt, there are many moving parts, and only so many levels for Sony to pull to accommodate consumers whilst protecting its own cash flow, so let's get on with just what may lie in store for the PS6.
When will we get a PS6 release date?
The PS6 doesn't look likely to launch until 2027 or 2028, according to official documents and speculation that has been made around them.
Market conditions have changed drastically in the last year, with memory pricing in particular proving to be a sticking point, preventing Sony from committing to a release date, as is the case with the Steam Machine and Steam Frame.
In a recent earnings call, Sony president and CEO Hiroki Totoki told a journalist (translated by Sony), “We have not yet decided on at what timing we will launch the new console, or at what prices” adding, “Looking at the current circumstances, the memory price is also expected to be very high FY [Finanical Year] 2027, because there will still be a shortage of supply. So under that assumption, we must think carefully what we will do”, as reported by VGC.
Looking further back, as part of the UK's Competition and Markets Authority investigation into Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard that took place in 2022, documents have revealed that Sony does not intend to release a new console until after 2027.
The interesting part of this document, which certainly seems to imply that Sony will not be launching the next PlayStation console on this side of 2027, reads as follows:
"Microsoft has offered to continue making Activision's games available on PlayStation only until 2027... By the time SIE launched the next generation of its PlayStation console (which is likely to occur around [redacted]), it would have lost access to Call of Duty and other Activision titles, making it extremely vulnerable to consumer switching and subsequent degradation in its competitiveness."
"Even assuming that SIE had the ability and resources to develop a similarly successful franchise to Call of Duty, it would take many, many years and billions of dollars to create a challenger to Call of Duty – and the example of EA's Battlefield shows that any such efforts would more than likely be unsuccessful."
This roughly falls in line with the length of recent console cycles, a cycle which Sony's Executive Vice President of Hardware Engineering and Operation Masayasu Ito confirmed would be repeated in an interview with Game Informer.He said: "In the past, the cycle for a new platform was seven to 10 years, but in view of the very rapid development and evolution of technology, it’s really a six to seven-year platform cycle."
He added: "Therefore our thinking is that as far as a platform is concerned for the PS5, it’s a cycle of maybe six to seven years. But doing that, a platform lifecycle, we should be able to change the hardware itself and try to incorporate advancements in technology. That was the thinking behind it, and the test case of that thinking was the PS4 Pro that launched in the midway of the PS4 launch cycle."
Furthermore, Omdia senior analyst George Jijiashvili told IGN that 2028 is what the company is reciting too: "We are expecting the PS5 Pro to be released in late 2024 — a year later than the equivalent PS4 Pro in its lifecycle. With that logic, we believe Sony is looking to extend PS5’s life cycle, with PS6 most likely to launch in 2028."
So there's still likely a fair few years before Sony commits to its next console. If you've been on the fence, now is as good a time as any to upgrade to a PS5.
PS6 price: How much could it cost?
Due to the ongoing memory pricing crisis, we can no longer rely on previous console generations to gauge a PS6 price.
There have already been multiple price increases for the PlayStation 5 this console generation, something Microsoft, Valve and Nintendo have also had to contend with.
Something we can absolutely count on is the PS6 costing more than the PS5 did at launch, even when adjusted for inflation.
In a recent poll, Digital Foundry found that 41% of its viewers would pay $699, $799 and more for a PlayStation 6, which is an increase of $200 and $300 over the PS5 Digital and Disc editions, respectively.
This would likely translate to a £599 or £699 price here in the UK, once VAT is taken into consideration.
Digital Foundry's viewers are more immersed in the gaming world than a typical consumer, but Sony will no doubt have insight into telemetry that will inform the company how much users would be willing to pay.
Of course, with the global economy in flux due to events such as the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, consumers may find themselves unable to stomach such a cost, but Sony may also find it economically unviable to subsidise the cost of a PS6, given how many users play free-to-play titles these days.
View Green Video on the source websiteWhat could we expect from the PS6?
Given market conditions, we could expect the PS6 to launch sometime in 2027 or 2028, depending on how much memory modules will cost. We can reasonably assume the console is going to be more expensive, but the PS6 should be more forward-looking than its predecessor, with technologies that allow it to work harder and smarter.
We have already seen the introduction of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR), a machine-learning-based upscaler that allows the PS5 Pro to render games at a lower base resolution before upscaling to a higher resolution. This means that developers can use more resources on features such as ray-tracing.
Sony and AMD, the latter of whom have provided PlayStation APUs (chips that include a processor and graphics processor) since the PS4, have already publicly entered a collaboration, Project Amethyst, which sees the two companies working on features such as image upscaling, as well as what sort of hardware functionality the upcoming AMD graphics cards, RDNA 5, will have.
In terms of how this will translate into real-world performance, many believe that the PS6 will have the graphical capabilities of a video card in the region of an Nvidia RTX 5080, being capable of advanced ray-tracing and able to deploy frame generation.
In terms of what games the PS6 will get, there is likely to be a lengthy cross-generation period shared by the PS5 and PS6, as given how expensive the console may end up being, uptake may be slow, and so developers and Sony will want to maximise the player count of new games.
When the PS5 launched, there were many cross-gen titles, such as Dirt 5, which was capable of running at 120 FPS on the then-new console.
We will likely see this again, as well as games featuring more ray-tracing techniques. Older titles such as Cyberpunk 2077 may receive updates to improve visuals, too.
To help sell the console, there will no doubt be some sort of exclusive title that shows off the capabilities of the new system.
There have been reports of Sony walking away from releasing PC ports, which it may be doing to incentivise players to remain on the console, especially with the upcoming Xbox Project Helix from Microsoft, which is to be a PC-Console hybrid, which would be capable of playing PlayStation PC ports.
Another wildcard is that it's likely we will see a PS6 handheld, and so games will have to be able to run on that system, as well as the premier home console.
All said, the next generation is going to be interesting, especially as Valve is making moe inroads with the Steam Machine, Steam Frame and SteamOS becoming available on more systems.
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