by Sony isn't quite sure when it ought to launch the PlayStation 6 - and what price the market can bear. That's the headline news discussed in this week's DF Direct episode, based on an interview released last week with Sony president and CEO Hiroki Totoki over at the Wall Street Journal.
"We have not yet decided on at what timing we will launch the new console, or at what prices," Totoki said. "So we would like to really observe and follow the situation."
That's quite an unusual admission from the normally taciturn Japanese company, but then we are in unusual times. The astronomical (and still growing) prices of flash memory components like RAM and SSDs have had significant effects on all sorts of gaming hardware, from DIY gaming PCs to handhelds and consoles.
With even current-gen RAM and SSDs now costing hundreds of pounds more than they did a year ago, console makers have repeatedly raised prices in response - and new, higher-end components that you would expect to find in the PS6 are likely to see even more significant price hikes as we enter the next-gen launch window.
While the AI-driven component crisis is far from a new topic, the interaction of this story with the PS6 handheld rumour is one that we haven't seen discussed as much. The crux of the matter is that the PS6 handheld was expected to precede the mainline console, but as a more price-sensitive device, the project may have been pushed back.
A PS6 handheld using PS5 silicon still makes a lot of sense, given the groundwork that Sony has laid with the "power saver" mode, but the state of the PC handheld market makes it clear that there's very little consumer demand for a device that could easily have doubled in price since it was first conceptualised due to higher RAM and SSD costs. Leaker Kepler_L2, for example, thinks that a price under $600 is now an impossibility.
Speaking of pricing, an Ampere Analysis report suggests that PS6 and Project Helix launching at a four-figure price point - as seems likely - could reduce sales over the first five years by 38 percent compared to the PS5 and Xbox Series X generation. That would see the PS6 become an almost purely enthusiast machine, with the PS5 and PS5 Pro hanging on for an even longer cross-gen period, and that may even be a conservative estimate.
The Ampere report suggests various countermeasures for Sony, including waiting until 2029 (!), more heavily relying on digital sales (which it looks like they'll do regardless) and "innovate on the hardware form factor and use cases, placing less emphasis on graphical improvement". That sounds like a handheld to me, and again it just doesn't seem likely to have the mass-market price to find significant success - as the most expensive part of the PS6 at this point isn't likely to be the next-gen silicon, it's the RAM and SSD.
What do you think Sony should do with the PS6 and PS6 handheld? Would you launch as originally planned, or postpone? And for pricing, how aggressive should Sony go, given that the end of physical media means more game purchase and DLC dollars going direct to Sony? Let me know in the comments below.