Sony Doesn't Even Have an Internal PS6 Date - What That Means for Your Wallet

If you've been skipping the PS5 because "the PS6 is right around the corner" - I have bad news. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki told the Wall Street Journal that the company hasn't settled on a release date for the PlayStation 6 even internally. Not a marketing date they're keeping secret. No date at all.

The culprit is the component crisis we keep hearing about: memory and chips being swallowed up by AI datacenters, supply chains rattled by the war in Iran, and price-fixing accusations on top of it all. Console manufacturers are effectively standing at the back of the queue, because AI companies will pay far more for the same silicon.

What it means for us

First: the PS5 generation is going to last. If you already own the console, that's quietly good news - your hardware stays current for longer and the library keeps growing without a forced upgrade.

Second: forget mid-generation price cuts. In older generations, a console would get cheaper over time. This one went the opposite way - instead of discounts we got price increases. With components this scarce and this expensive, I see no realistic path to a cheaper PS5 anytime soon. If you spot a genuine discount on new hardware, that's an exception, not a trend.

Third: the second-hand market stays strong. When new hardware is expensive and the next generation is nowhere in sight, used consoles hold their value. That's good if you're selling, less fun if you were hoping to grab a cheap used PS5 locally.

What strikes me most is the honesty. We're used to executives promising the moon; here the boss of Sony openly says the situation is so unstable that they can't even plan a launch. The whole industry is currently hostage to AI datacenter demand, and no one - not even a giant like Sony - can promise when that changes.

And maybe a longer generation isn't a tragedy. Developers finally know the hardware inside out, nobody is forced into cross-gen compromises, and our wallets get a breather. The PS6 will come when it comes. Until then, the PS5 isn't going anywhere - and neither, unfortunately, is its price.

Image: Xephuwu / CC BY-SA 4.0, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KontrolerDualSense.jpg