In the gaming world, it’s important to always look forward. Technology moves incredibly quickly, and gamers have to move with it if they want to have a hope of keeping up. It’s for that reason that we’re already thinking about the PS6 and what it will look like. When can we expect a PS6 release date? What will the console’s specs be? How much is it going to cost you?
Of course, we can’t actually know any of this information yet. The PlayStation 6 is a long, long way off; the PS5 only launched in late 2020, and Sony estimates that the current console cycle won’t be complete until around 2026-2027 at the earliest. Still, there’s no harm in speculating, is there? Here’s what we know (and what’s floating around) about the PS6 release date and various other stats concerning the console!
PS6 Release Date
Right now, we don’t have any concrete information whatsoever regarding a potential PS6 release date. However, we can look at past form for PlayStation consoles to see when the release date might happen. Let’s examine each console generation’s PlayStation release date and extrapolate when the PS6 might arrive. Note that these dates are for European and UK releases, so the actual dates might differ for you depending on where you are in the world.
- PlayStation – September 29th, 1995
- PlayStation 2 – November 24th, 2000
- PlayStation 3 – March 23rd, 2007
- PlayStation 4 – November 29th, 2013
- PlayStation 5 – November 12th, 2020
As you can see, major PlayStation console release dates tend to fall later in the year (with the PS3 being a notable exception; it was delayed due to a manufacturing issue). With that in mind – and assuming that console cycles last around 6-7 years, as Sony has previously claimed – we can reasonably expect the PS6 release date to fall in November 2026 or 2027. Our money is on 2027; the PS5 has been Sony’s most successful console launch ever, so we think the company is going to want to sell its flagship machine for some time to come.
PS6 Price
Unfortunately, this is an area in which we have to do an extensive amount of speculation. Currency inflation is constantly in flux, and so we can’t imagine that putting a number on the PS6 price will tell us anything useful about what it might cost; it’s just like the release date for the console in that it is an ephemeral figure we just can’t predict with any certainty.
One thing’s for sure, though: Sony will want to stay competitive when it comes to PS6 pricing. The PS5 costs £349.99 for the Digital version and £449.99 for the Disc version. Compare and contrast this to Microsoft’s current-gen offerings; the Series S costs £250 (but is substantially less powerful), while the Series X will set you back £449.99, in line with the PS5.
With that in mind – and assuming Microsoft is still competing in the next-gen console race – we’re expecting Sony to keep PS6 pricing competitive with Microsoft. We’d be surprised if the console breaks £500 (or the equivalent of that amount in 2026-2027 money, of course); people don’t tend to want to spend more than that on dedicated gaming machines, so Sony will likely aim for that kind of pricing.
This means that the PS6, like many machines before it, will almost certainly be a “loss leader” – a machine that doesn’t necessarily make profit for the company, but entices more customers to play Sony games and buy into the ecosystem. To make a profit on hardware, Sony would need to price the machine beyond a competitive rate, which would allow Microsoft to swoop in and take the crown.
PS6 Specs
We only know one thing for sure when it comes to the PS6 specs: the machine is almost certainly going to dwarf what the PS5 can do, which is impressive considering that Sony’s console is already pushing the limits of what’s possible with current gaming tech. If you think the PS5 is powerful, just wait until you meet the PS6; it’s going to blow Sony’s current-gen console out of the water.
So, what can we guess the PS6 specs will be? Given the probable release date, it’s very likely that by that time, 8K will be a widely accepted standard for display technology. It may not be the main way many play their games, but it’s certainly not unreasonable to say that more people will have 8K displays. As such, expect the PS6 to support 8K by default.
We can almost definitely expect the console to have an SSD inside, and the graphics chip will probably come close to being around six to eight times more powerful than the PS5’s. Expect silky-smooth performance, lightning-fast loading times, and a huge amount of memory for multitasking. It’s also worth thinking about the SSD itself, which will almost definitely be bigger than the PS5’s weirdly-sized 825GB default owing to increasing game file size.
We’ve got a wishlist for things we want to see included in the PS6. Here are some of the features we hope Sony includes when its next console comes along (whenever that release date might be!).
- Upgradeable features. One area in which the PC gaming market unquestionably lords it over consoles is the ability to easily swap out and upgrade components. We want to see a user-friendly way to achieve this on the PS6. It’s not outside the realms of possibility to allow users to upgrade the console’s graphics card, its memory, or its storage without needing to take screws to the machine.
- Wireless accessory charging. The PS5 uses the USB-C standard for its controllers and many of its wireless accessories, which is great; USB-C has many benefits over the previously-favoured Micro USB. For the next console generation, though, we want to see wireless charging. Imagine just being able to drop your controller or your headset on top of your PS6 and let it charge. Magic, right?
- A smaller machine. This one might be wishing a little too much given the prospective power of the PS6, but we really want to see Sony try to improve the form factor in time for its next console’s release date. The PS5 is an absolute behemoth, and it’s hard to fit it in many gaming spaces. The PS6 is likely to continue that trend; it’ll be hugely powerful, after all. Still, we would like to see the company try to shrink it down a little so that it can fit underneath most TVs without any issues.
Conclusion
Right now, it’s very hard to make any value judgements about what the PS6 will look like, when its release date will be, or any other concrete statistics. We do know it’ll be more powerful than the PS5, that it probably won’t arrive for a good five or six years, and that it’ll take advantage of whatever the tech landscape looks like at that time (cloud gaming, anyone?). At the moment, though, it’s anybody’s guess what the PS6 will bring with it. Roll on that elusive release date so that we can see how many of our predictions we got right, and how many we’ll have to hold on to in time for the PS7!