By all measures, the PlayStation 4 is a pretty darn successful console. Since it came out in 2013, the PS4 has lifetime sales of about 79 million units, which makes it the best-selling current generation console and the 10th best-selling console of all time (that’s counting handhelds, but if you exclude those, the PS4 moves up to sixth). That said, the PS4 is now a five-year-old console, so you have to wonder how much more time Sony will spend on the console before it moves on to the next generation.
It does look like Sony has some idea of how much longer that will be. Tuesday, May 22 was Sony’s IR Day—whereat the company’s executives speak with investors about the company’s future—and according to Wall Street Journal tech reporter Takashi Mochizuki (via Mashable), Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO and president John Kodera said that the Playstation brand will make some sort of significant change in March 2021. Mochizuki translated Kodera as saying that “March 2021 would be when PlayStation [would] ‘crouch down once’ to grow further in the future,” while Japanese translator Sato suggested that Kodera might have meant something more like “taking a breather.”
Kodera also said that the PS4 is entering the final phase of its life cycle, which would make sense based on historical precedent: The PS3 was released in 2006 and was Sony’s primary console for seven years until the PS4 came out in 2013, while Sony only stopped producing new PS3 units just last year. The year 2021 will mark eight years of the PS4, which lines up with the PS3’s life cycle.
Do you think we’re really getting a new Sony console in 2021? What else could Kodera have meant? Share your speculations down in the comments!
Featured image: Pete Slater/Flickr
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