Sony officially teases PS6 handheld with “beyond the living room” claims
Sony hints at a PlayStation 6 handheld and confirms its console pricing plans
As part of a new investor presentation, Sony has confirmed that it plans to take its next-generation PlayStation platform “beyond the living room” and that it does not plan to heavily subsidise next-generation consoles. If nothing else, this implies that PlayStation is making big changes to how it does things with its PlayStation 6 hardware. It also confirms that next-generation consoles will be expensive. Is a PS6 handheld now confirmed? Not quite, but it is implied.
PS6 handheld teased
With its next-generation platform, Sony aims to “we aim to provide experiences tailored to users’ play styles beyond the living room”. This is a clear suggestion that there will be a non-standard PlayStation 6 console. By that we mean that Sony’s PlayStation 6 generation will not be limited to traditional, connected-to-the-TV gaming experiences.
Sony’s plans for a PlayStation 6 handheld have been long rumoured. This is the first time Sony has suggested that its PlayStation 6 generation will offer more than a traditional console experience.
Question: Considering consumer behavior, could you update us on your current thinking regarding hardware pricing and profitability? For the next-generation platform, is it reasonable to assume that your pricing will continue to prioritize profitability of the hardware, as it does today?
Answer: First, we regard hardware as the base for providing the gaming experience, and by offering products such as the PlayStation Portal Remote Player (PS Portal), we aim to provide experiences tailored to users’ play styles beyond the living room, which has traditionally been considered the primary usage environment. As for pricing, it is not realistic for us to absorb all component cost increases, and we have already implemented some price increases outside Japan. At present, however, sales are proceeding as planned, and we do not believe this has led to a decline in customer demand. As a principle, we do not intend to sell hardware at significant losses. At the same time, we are carefully monitoring the market and continuing to evaluate our approach. We believe it is important for us to make every effort to ensure that customer fully understand the value we provide in relation to pricing.
– Sony Investors Meeting Q&A
Sony won’t “sell hardware at significant losses”
In its answer, Sony has confirmed that it does not “intend to sell hardware at significant losses”, putting to bed the notion that it will heavily subsidise its next-generation consoles. While Sony is “carefully monitoring the market,” basic economics prevent it from offering massive hardware subsidies. These subsidies need to be recouped with profits from other areas. As such, larger subsidies will require larger profits in other areas, or a longer period during which Sony makes no money from its users.
Yes, Sony can afford to not make a profit on its consoles. It can even afford to make a small loss. However, that doesn’t mean that Sony can give gamers large subsidies on their hardware. After all, that money needs to come from somewhere.
Leaked PS6 Handheld Specifications
According to the leaker KeplerL2, Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 6 Handheld should feature a GPU that surpasses the Xbox Series S and Nintendo Switch 2. In fact, the leaker thinks that the system’s GPU will be “a bit ahead of XSS in Raster”, but “Massively ahead” in ray tracing/path tracing workloads.
Sony’s next-generation consoles will feature AMD’s next-generation RDNA 5 graphics architecture. With this new architecture, we will see a major boost in both AI and ray tracing performance. With Project Amethyst, Sony and AMD have already unveiled several architectural features. This includes Neural Arrays, Radiance Cores, and Universal Compression (see more details here), all of which aim to deliver higher performance and greater power efficiency.
- 4x Zen 6c + 2x Zen 6 LP CPU Cores
- 16x RDNA 5 GPU Compute Units (CUs)
- 192-bit memory bus
- LPDDR5X memory
- 135mm² TSMC 3nm Silicon
While Sony’s planned handheld will be much less powerful than the company’s full PlayStation 6 console (leaked specifications here), both contain the same underlying CPU and GPU architectures.
With RDNA 5 comes AMD’s new “Neural Arrays”, which will boost AI performance. AMD has confirmed that it is working on a next-generation “FSR Diamond” upscaler, which should deliver higher image quality than AMD FSR 4.1 and Sony PSSR 2. Sony’s Mark Cerny has also unveiled plans to bring Frame Generation to “PlayStation Platforms”.
While Sony has not officially confirmed its PS6 handheld plans, it has now implied that a non-living-room PS6 will exist. That suggests Sony’s rumoured PS6 handheld is real and could be a game-changing system for the company.
You can join the discussion on Sony’s PlayStation 6 hardware plans on the OC3D Forums.
