PlayStation 6 release in 2028? 'Creating a console is a roughly 4-year journey,' Sony says

If Sony sticks to its established cadence, the next-gen PlayStation 6 could release in holiday 2028.

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Console generations define the video games market. New hardware gives developers a chance to sell new games, or re-sell old ones, and content can be elongated for maximum sales. Think of each new console launch as the opening of a vast digital bazaar, while behind the scenes Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo make power plays to optimize their platforms for developers.

Some companies like Sony have become quite regular in their generational timelines. PlayStation consoles typically last 6-7 years, and Sony likes to release a new mid-cycle refresh every four years or so. That means the PS6 might be due out in 2028, which isn't exactly a surprise given existing market trends, but it's still something to be aware of.

"One of the trickier aspects of console design is that creating a console is roughly a four-year journey. In order to launch PS5 Pro in 2024, we were actually trying to work out the key feature set in 2020. In other words, at a time before PlayStation 5 had even been released," PlayStation 5 architect Mark Cerny said in a recent tech breakdown video.

For their part, Microsoft also thinks Sony will release the PS6 in 2028.

In the same video, Cerny confirmed that AMD and Sony are teaming up in a new collab codenamed Amethyst to build a new hardware architecture that's specifically optimized for ML and AI, which will undoubtedly be the big broadening feature set that the next-gen PlayStation 6 targets.

Sony isn't ready to talk about the PS6 though. In a recent interview, IGN tried to squeeze some PS6 details out of Cerny, but they were shut down.

Here's a copy of the exchange:

To jump to the future then, you said the console development is a roughly four-year process. Does this mean we can imply that work has begun on the PS6?

We are not discussing PS6 at this time.

Can we expect it in roughly four years?

Same answer.