The PlayStation 4 Is Entering the End of Its Life Cycle
The PlayStation 4 Is Entering the End of Its Life Cycle
Earlier this week, Sony Interactive’s CEO and President John Kodera announced that the PS4 was entering the end of its life cycle. The news came at the company’s mid-term corporate strategy meeting and was reiterated by Kodera in a later interview Bloomberg Japan.
Though Kodera makes it clear that there are plans beyond the life of the PS4, he doesn’t go into any details as to what those plans might entail.
This console generation has been a busy one for Sony. The PlayStation 4 has maintained strong sales since it’s launch in 2013, but the PS4 Pro and PSVR haven’t quite lived up to the expectations.
Sony announced earlier this year that they expect the PS4 lineup to see declining sales this year for the first time, despite a fantastic schedule of exclusive titles on the horizon. Of course, exclusives have been one of the PS4’s strongest selling points this generation. While the Xbox One has had arguably better hardware, Microsoft just hasn’t been able to compete in the exclusive’s department.
On top of that, Sony has greatly improved upon the PlayStation Network. Xbox Live was once the undisputed champ, but the microsoft service has lost a lot of ground to PSN over the last five years.
According to Sony, PSN has “annual sales of more than one trillion yen [over 9 billion USD] and monthly active users of more than 80 million.” The company says it has plans to further grow their subscription service through “PlayStationVR, the cloud gaming service PlayStationNow, the video services PlayStationVue and PlayStationVideo, and the music service PlayStationMusic.”
Don’t expect announcements on a PS5 to come anytime soon, though. Sony has already revealed that their E3 presentation will focus primarily on four of their biggest upcoming games, Death Stranding, Ghost of Tsushima, Spider-Man, and The Last of Us Part II and an executive further confirmed that “there will be no new hardware announcements at E3.”
With plenty of juice left in the PS4 lineup, we’d be surprised to hear any real details on the next PlayStation console before 2020, with a couple possible teases in mid- to late-2019. Anything more and Sony would run the risk of cannibalizing its own sales.
Also…
Don’t forget to check out some of our other weekly pieces, The LoL Weekly Preview, Recap and Highlight, as well as something I’m Forgetting and Week in Review.