It feels like PlayStation 5 was released yesterday, but it’s actually almost six years old. This is usually when we can expect to start hearing more about a console’s successor. Seven years is a typical console generation lifespan; no PlayStation has ever been released more than seven years after its predecessor, and the eight-year gaps between Switch and Switch 2, or Xbox 360 and Xbox One, are the longest ever for a home console. (Both pale next to the Game Boy’s incredible 12-year run, though.) If it doesn’t feel like it’s time to start thinking about the PlayStation 6 yet, it’s because lengthening game development times have slowed the pace of new releases for PS5, because initial take-up of the console was slowed by supply issues, and because the COVID-19 pandemic distorted everyone’s sense of time.
But the time is upon us all the same. As it happens, there are reasons why the PS5 could keep going for a few years yet. But regardless, Sony is surely already planning for the next PlayStation, and considering how it’s going to extend PS5’s dominance of the dedicated home console market and crushing defeat of Xbox into the next generation.
Here’s what we know so far. Reports suggest that the PS6 is headed for a very high price point, albeit not quite as high as the next Xbox. Trusted tech leaker Kepler_L2 says that the RAM and NAND memory alone for the PS6 currently costs over $680, a result of the mass shortage in computer memory during the current AI data center boom.
That would likely put the price of the PS6 at around $1,000. PS6 won't, however, cost quite as much as the next Xbox. Kepler_L2 says that the cost of all the components for the PS6 (known as the bill of materials, or "BOM") is "approximately $200 lower" than for the next Xbox console, codenamed Project Helix.
Reports say that Microsoft projects Helix's price will land between $1,200 and $1,800. Again, this supports a $1,000-plus price tag for Sony's next console, perhaps at the lower end of that range. We don’t know, and we’re probably a long way from knowing.
Until recently, it seemed that a November 2027 release for the PlayStation 6 was on the cards, if not actually the plan, following the pattern established by the PS3, PS4, and PS5. But the RAM crisis has changed that. Sony has been open that it has not set a release date for PS6, and that memory shortages are the reason.
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