As if there was any doubt, Sony has officially confirmed it is well into the development of a new console. Though there is no official name of the console as of yet, we’re going to go out on a limb here and guess that new system will be called the PlayStation 5.
Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida recently talked with Financial Times, stating, “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware.” Yoshida would not delve into any details regarding what form this potential hardware would take.
Taken at face value, this quote does not mean much and does not give gamers much to go on, as it is pretty obvious the end of the generation is near. We’re almost five years deep and typically console generations last around six or seven years. However, what is an interesting take away from this is that Financial Times also reports that their sources claim that the successor to the PlayStation 4, “might not represent a major departure from the PS4 and that the fundamental architecture would be similar.”
If this is the case, this will put Sony and PlayStation on a plane all their own as their direct competitor, Microsoft, plans to potentially release two different consoles at once: one a streaming box, and the other a traditional games console. It seems as if Sony has decided to stay the course and keep delivering traditional experiences to gamers when it comes to hardware. With Microsoft’s recent announcement of its Project xCloud (which will allow gamers to run games on any internet-enabled device), Sony must have some kind of innovation up its sleeve for its new console to compete.
The best news to come out of this is the fact that if the architecture is similar, the system will at least be backward compatible with PS4 games. That is something everyone can get behind.
What do you think? Are we on the brink of an announcement for the PlayStation 5? Is it still too early for the next generation? Sound off in the comments below.
