The PS4 is approaching the end of its life cycle – PlayStation CEO

During Sony’s recent Corporate strategy meeting the head of the company’s PlayStation group, John Kodera, stated that the PS4 was approaching the end of its life cycle, a clear suggestion that the company are already working on a next-generation console. 

During 2018, Sony predicts that they will sell around 16 million PS4 consoles, which is less than the 19 million systems that the company sold in the previous year. Sony expects to earn less money this year from hardware sales, thanks to rising component costs, though this is set to be offset by increased demand in services like PSN and as well as digital game sales.   

Sony has already sold 79 million PS4 consoles, approaching the PS3’s lifetime sales of 80 million units. Moving forward, Sony wants to create more first-party exclusives and to “harness growth opportunities” with “add-on content”.  

Koldera also told analysts and investors that between now and March 2021 PlayStation would “crouch down once” to then grow further in the future, leading to speculation that a PS5 console will release in 2020 and have a positive effect on Sony’s revenue after March 2021. 

Sony has already confirmed that they have no plans to reveal new PlayStation hardware at E3, though it seems clear that Sony has started work on next-generation console hardware which will be based around AMD’s Zen processing cores, which would give Sony’s next console a significant boost in CPU power. Today it seems clear that Sony is working on a next-generation console, but that console is not going to be ready for release for quite some time.