It has been more than four years since the PS4 came out, which means that many are looking forward to Sony talking about its next home console, the PlayStation 5, at some point. It has already been the topic of discussion several times over the past year and now it looks like Ubisoft has become the latest to jump in, saying that the PS5 won’t be coming until at least 2019.
The comment came in the midst of an investor call (the same one where the launch sales numbers for Assassin’s Creed Origins were revealed), when boss Yves Guillemot stated his belief that new consoles are “a minimum of two years” away.
“As Sony launched PlayStation 4 Pro last year and Microsoft Xbox One X this year, we think we still have a minimum of two years in front of us before something new is coming. But that’s our perception, we don’t have any confidential information on that front.”
This seems like a reasonable estimate, really. Many people had been eyeing a 2019 release for the PlayStation 5, so seeing a major player in the industry having the same outlook is somewhat reassuring even if they’re not privy to any confidential information.
More importantly, the PlayStation had a blockbuster 2017 and Sony is already look forward to 2018 topping that. It wouldn’t make sense for Sony to halt its own momentum and take the wind out its sails by releasing a new console when the PlayStation 4 is doing so well right now. Not only would that divert attention from the previous console, but it could potentially split the console’s library and cause some games intended for the PS4 to be delayed and arrive on the PlayStation 5 instead (which would be particularly bad due to Sony’s apparent aversion towards backwards compatibility).
At any rate, 2019 is still a “ways off” and we still have 2018 to look forward to, so hopefully Sony doesn’t do anything that would detract from it.
