The PlayStation 4 launched in 2013, has been released, but that doesn’t mean gamers have given up on the console just yet. During its latest earnings call, Sony revealed that the console has sold 59 million units.
But this statistic came with a huge caveat: that the Playstation Network as a whole has 118 million monthly active users (MAUs), and is increasing by 9% year on year. This means that at least half of the platform’s current user base have stayed faithful to the PS4, and haven’t upgraded their console yet.
While Sony also report that the PS5 is in the second half of its life cycle, it looks like Sony chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki is remaining optimistic, as he added in the earnings call that “console generation overlap will be handled well and MAU will steadily increase.”
There’s plenty of reasons why users are reluctant to give up their PS4, but a big one is probably price. Since its launch in November 2020, the price for the PS5 hasn’t reduced. If anything, the price of PS5s has gone up in certain regions. Coupled with the fact that there are no major game releases on the horizon specifically for that console, there’s little incentive for players to part with that kind of cash.
While the PS5 is reaching the second half of its life cycle, that doesn’t mean that we can expect the PS6 release date anytime soon. In fact, the earliest we can expect to see PS6 is probably at the end of 2027 and 2028.
We made this estimate because Microsoft has previously offered to keep Activision Blizzard games working on the platform until 2027. With that time frame in mind, it makes sense to assume that Microsoft isn’t anticipating a new console of its own until 2027 at the earliest.
Image Credit: Photo by Nikita Kachanovsky via Unsplash
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