It’s no secret that last week, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO John Kodera made an interesting statement about the PlayStation 4 (PS4) and its future, or lack thereof. According to him, the PS4 is ‘entering the end of its life-cycle.’ This announcement isn’t a surprise per se as the original console was released in November 2013, almost five years ago. During these five years, the PS4 has sold exceptionally well. As of the end of 2017, over 73.6 million units have been sold worldwide.
This puts the PS4 in the top 10 of the best-selling consoles ever, making it a huge commercial success for Sony – much like the previous generations of the console. Now, in case you’re already collecting spare change to buy the new PS5, you’ll sadly have to wait quite some time still.
A new PlayStation in the making?
“We will use the next three years to prepare the next step, to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future.” was the somewhat cryptic comment Kodera made in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Luckily for fans, Sony won’t keep quiet on the new console that long. The company does have a history of announcing new hardware one to two years before release. Since they sadly have confirmed that they won’t be making any announcements at the upcoming E3, that all but guarantees we’ll be hearing some news over the course of the next year.
Kodera’s announcements and timelines mean that the new PS generation will spend more time in development than previous generations. Where earlier generations were released roughly six years apart, it will be nearly a decade from the first release of the PS4 that we see the PS5, and that is as long as nothing delays the launch.
We hope for big E3 news
There is a small chance that Sony will comment sooner rather than later on the new generation, but most industry experts agree that the Japanese company will probably remain silent on the matter. What they have succeeded in doing though, is getting more fans interested in their announcements at E3, which are confirmed to be about some of their new game titles.
Sony announced that they wanted to focus on new in-house titles rather than immediately concentrating on the next hardware generation. This means that despite the life-cycle announcement, the development of new titles for the PS4 won’t slow down just yet. The titles that are confirmed to be covered at the upcoming E3 are The Last of Us 2, Spider-Man, Ghosts of Tsushima, and Death Stranding.
If the rumors are to be believed – sadly they rarely are – there may also be sequels to Bloodborne and Horizon Zero Dawn on the radar, or perhaps a remake of an original PlayStation game. I personally don’t think so though. Sony has made it a point to focus on game titles this year and hasn’t been secretive about what they are going to talk about at E3, so surprises are unlikely at best.
Photo credit: The feature image “PlayStation symbol stencil art” was done by Niklas Hellerstedt. The Dual Shock 4 controller photo was done by Leon Terra.
Source: Patrick Faller (GameSpot) / Owen S. Good (Polygon) / Bloomberg / Takashi Mochizuki (WSJ) / IGN
