PlayStation 5 is entering ‘the latter stages of its life’, Sony says
If you thought the PS5 was still a spring chicken, think again - its very own creators have confirmed the console could be on its way to the great PlayStation farm in the sky.
Sony confirmed this attitude in an earnings call this week, prompting plenty of shock and disbelief on social media as people agreed that the console still feels new to them, and still doesn't necessarily have the library of games you'd associate with its middle-age.
The key fact is that the PS5's sales slowed down a little in the last financial year, and undercut Sony's hopes, reportedly selling 21 million units instead of the 25 million it was looking for.
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That led it to revise its estimates and expectations for the rest of the console's lifespan, and prompted Sony’s senior vice president, Naomi Matsuoka, to admit that the PS5 is looking ahead to "the latter stages of its life cycle", as per Bloomberg.
Sony also admitted that it doesn't have a massive library of upcoming first-party games to release in 2024, so it looks like it might be a fairly quiet year for the console, after a more barn-storming 2023.
Of course, since late 2023 saw the release of a slimmed-down version of the PS5, it shouldn't really come as a major surprise that the console is now getting long in the tooth - these smaller versions always come once a PlayStation has been around for a while.
The PS5 launched while the pandemic was still coming in big waves, too, so there's almost been a sort of compression of time that makes it easy to overlook how long it's been around for.
There's also the possibility that Sony is working on a long-rumored PS5 Pro, which would bring boosted specs and power to let gamers enjoy the same library of titles at higher resolutions or frame rates.
However, this has never been confirmed and wasn't hinted at by Sony in the call, so there are plenty of people who now think we're instead just strapped in to wait a couple of years before the eventual reveal of the PlayStation 6.
If 2024 is going to be quiet from Sony's first-party games perspective, one big silver lining comes in the form of persistent industry rumours that Xbox will bring some of its former exclusives to the platform, at least. So, from Sea of Thieves to Starfield, there could still be some big games arriving on PS5 this year that we don't yet know about.