Analyst Says Sony Likely to Delay PlayStation 6 Release Date - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 26 January 2026 / 13,642 Views
MST Financial senior analyst David Gibson in a report on the Sandstone Insights Japan website claims Sony is likely to extend the PlayStation 5 lifecycle and delay the release of the PlayStation 6 to later than most forecasts have suggested.
"PlayStation Lifecycle Extension: Sony sees the PS5's lifecycle extended," said Gibson via Google Translate. "The release of PS6 is expected to be later than many expected."
The PS5 launched in November 2020 and a typical lifespan of seven years before the next-generation launches would see an expected release window of November 2027. With the increased cost in RAM and other PC parts due to all the AI data centers being built this could be a reason for Sony to delay the release of the PS6 to 2028 or later.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
More Articles
Manifesting for 2029 or even 2030 release. Absolutely no need to release new hardware when there is barely any games to fully use PS5 as it is. This way we can have a good generational leap without outrageous prices
One of the biggest issues on PC is that games are not optomized. This is largely inpart to the fact that they can often create any arbitrary set of system requirements that will bruteforce any ineffencines. Imagine if people said Nvidia could release the 50 series until devs had optomized for the 40 Series. It would never happen. So we put this impossible thing squarely on Sony's shoulders which is even dumber because their games are optomized.
"until devs had optomized" most of the times devs are not the problem, publishers and even shareholders are, because they want quick buck on their investments, so they rush things on launch and maybe, to some degree they let the devs polish the games later on the money made from the initial sales..
Indeed, hence patch after patch.
"One of the biggest issues on PC is that games are not optimized." They're not optimized on consoles either. Games on console get a lot of patches post launch and they run a lot better than it's release.
PC games are optimized and get optimized. Mostly.
It's those "outlier developers" who refuse to make an effort that bring down public perception with their second rate ports.
But for all intents, my period-correct PC's often match or exceed the equivalent consoles in regards to visuals and performance... And I can prioritize a games settings to match my preferences. I.E. 1440P and high framerates over 4K and lower framerates.
An example is when my PC had a Radeon RX 580 which offered comparable visuals/performance to the Xbox One X GPU and games often had similar settings and framerates even with console-optimized games like Halo Infinite.
The PS5 overhead was pretty much entirely used up getting PS4 games to play at 60FPS. There’s not much left after that, unless you want to play games at 30 FPS again.
For Playstation i think there is more potential in a PS5 handheld and a PS5 budget super slim. than a PS6
Budget for sure but AI is screwing things, resources and RAM being swallowed up. I think we'd have one if it wasn't for that.
Makes sense considering there are hardly any games that are pushing the PS5 hardware to it's limits.
Good. I am done buying new consoles anyway. Switch 2 the last one I ever buy. Not counting new consoles that play old games.
which makes perfect sense imo.
I'm very okay with this.
I've learned to never trust analysts as they get things wrong all the time. I'm still expecting 2027 or 2028.
I agree on the analyst thing. Have you seen of the declarations from Michael Pacther? He said the Switch would fail and that after the Activision Deal that Playstation's days were numbered (again). With a lot of analysts they tend to let their personal bias dictate reading of the facts instead of allowing the facts to form predictions based on emperical data.
Water is wet. 2024 seemed like the last year that we could predict PS6 to likely come out in 2027. For the past year, 2028-2029 looks most likely.
Economic conditions, shortages, the success of PS5, and the PS5 Pro have bought Sony more time.
Microsoft took 8 years to replace Xbox 360. Nintendo took 8 years and 3 months to replace Switch. It's Sony's turn. They've never gone more than 7 years without replacing hardware but it's time.
There is no logical reason to give us PS6 less than 2 years from now.
Your comparisons with the Switch and Xbox 360 are irrelevant, because we're not in the same situation with PlayStation today. The Xbox 360 represents the best generation of Xbox, and we mustn't forget that it was released well before the PS3. Xbox extended the 360's lifespan as much as possible to maximize sales. The same is true for the Switch: it's Nintendo's best-selling home console, and Nintendo exploited it to the fullest to sell as many units as possible. They could even have released the Switch 2 in 2026, but its lack of power made that impossible. This time, the situation is very different. Xbox Series sales are disastrous. I'm sure Xbox will release its console at the end of 2027. I don't think PlayStation would allow its direct competitor a two-year sales lead; they remember the 360-PS3 era well. My personal opinion is that the PS6 will be released either at the end of 2027 or at the latest at the end of 2028, unless the prices are too high. Then again, we still have two years; things can change quickly.
Do it in 2030. This is the 6th year of the ps5 and there was barely any need for it. I am of course curious what next gen might hold but with deminishing returns I would expect a ps6 to be even more superflous until ways into its lifecycle. Irrespective of the ps6 release date, as long as my ps5 keeps working, it will be the ps-console I will use the longest.
hardware prices are set to massively increase. Ram is already up, SSD prices are about to increase, I assume CPU and GPU prices will come up as TSMC hit max capacity. I can easily see the PS5 price increasing this year and again next year.... Why on earth would sony consider a PS6 anytime before 2029 or 2030 earliest. If they released one before then the price would be crazy high.
Bear in mind games are still being released for the PS4. I don’t think the PS6 is on the horizon.
I'm all for this. With the way things are going on in this world I think it would be a good time to slow things down.
And they should do that, from every perspective. This generation feels like the shortest 5+ years ever. We are only just now seeing games that could not have been done on the previous gen (mostly Death Stranding 2), and for the most part the first 3-4 years of PS5 nobody even noticed the console as anything more than a PS4 Pro+.
Maybe it was Covid, maybe the fact that games reached maturity and peak graphical fidelity in the previous gen, but PS5 has not felt like a true generation upgrade, and it is only now that we see the console output products that we would normally have expected in Year 2 (!) with previous generations.
Whenever it’s released it’s day one for me.👍
That is smart thing to do. What would be the point of new generation. Games already look amazing what more PS6 can bring to the table. What Sony should do is to lower the price of PS5 Pro to something like 550e or 600e and just discontinue base PS5 and make Pro new Base model.
No brainer decision
With how rough the current economic climate and even video game specific market is, delaying the ps6 release makes plenty of sense. Ps5 is good enough to last awhile longer anyways.
GTA VI is almost a "timed exclusive" + PS6 is delayed to +2028.
Imho, PS5 has a real shot at +130M consoles sold, perhaps even ~140M.
This makes sense for all sorts of reasons.
Upgrades aren't even impressive these days the way they used to be with huge graphical leaps every gen. I mean the PS4 to PS5 upgrade seemed very meh (it was basically it does higher res a bit better, there are fancier lighting effects, and less loading times / loading between areas), not exactly an upgrade to shout about. No point bringing out another system that is barely gonna be noticeably better than the current system. Also the "main" game for the system (GTA6) hasn't even released yet. And prices are HIGHER than they were at launch, hard to bring out a new system when the current old system is still selling as a high priced premium product. And the Xbox is essentially zero competition these days while Nintendo is making all sorts of mistakes so far this gen so competition isn't exactly gonna kill off an aging PS5. And PS5 will likely keep selling decently (>10 million) for a few more years with the business focus being on selling lots of software.
Don't really see a reason for a new system until perhaps holiday 2029.
I feel like 2029 or 2030 is about right. But, that will of course depend on component prices. I don't want a new generation to launch until they can do so at whatever the day's equivalent of about $500 in 2025 money is. That doesn't seem realistic anytime soon. Maybe after the AI boom slows down, assuming it's not followed by another massive crypto boom.
PS5 can easily provide and hold its own for years to come and the Pro satisfy the itch for a more refined and powerful experience.
Hoping for 2028-2030 release window.
The farther the better.
Man, do I miss the days when life-cycles were five/six years long and were such massive upgrades that your jaw hit the floor the first time you saw screen shots/videos of what they could do.
Today, it feels like I'm still in the 360 generation, only refined.
I can't think of any generational leap ever where my jaw hit the floor the first time I saw screenshots or videos of what they could do. I will say that the start of the 3rd gen was a significant improvement. That impressed me. But that's the only time I've ever felt that way. All of the other generational leaps, in my opinion, have seen modest improvement when comparing the later games from a previous gen to the early games of the next gen .
The latest genenration of S class also will prolong its life to 2030 from 7 years one the generations before. So is the PS.
