Oliver Haslam on May 23, 2018, 9:57 pm

Sony: PS4 Nears End Of Life Cycle, PlayStation 5 In Development

With the PS4 now starting to reach the end of its life cycle, there is understandable attention starting to be placed on what will come after it.

The PS4 made an appearance seven years after the PS3 and PS4, and is now almost five years old itself. Based on that it should be a fairly safe bet that the next in the ongoing line of Sony game consoles is under development right now, and we’ve also received semi-confirmation that this is exactly the case.

Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO, John Kodera, said as much during the Sony IR Day 2018 in Japan recently when, as The Wall Street Journal reports, he said that the PS4 is now entering its final phase. This comes after he informed us that the drop off in PS4 sales is impacting Sony’s revenue, although PS Plus subscriptions are helping to minimize that impact.

Beyond this Kodera also said that we can expect Sony and PlayStation to start looking towards the future in March 2021, a time window which seems very specific indeed. That would be eight years after the PS4 was launched and in turn would also mean that we should expect the PS5 to be in development now.

That doesn’t mean we expect to see anything relating to the new console during this year’s E3 though, so don’t be disappointed when Sony just shows off games rather than new hardware.

On the subject of games, Kodera also said that PlayStation will continue to introduce whole new IPs moving forward while also leveraging those which already exist by refreshing them. The recently Released God of War would be a very good example of that.