PlayStation 6 tease confirms it's closer than we'd have liked

The PlayStation 6 might be closer than ever now, as a new tease from Sony reveals the company’s plans.

We’re almost five years on from the release of the PS5, and it’s been a wild ride. In the last few years, Sony has released bangers like Astro Bot, God of War Ragnarök, and Spider-Man 2 upon us.

But with development on the PS6 quietly underway, Sony is also looking ahead to the future of the platform. And now, a new tease may have confirmed it might be closer than we’d have liked.

During an investors call earlier this month, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Hideaki Nishino spoke about the future of PlayStation hardware (thanks, VGC).

“While we cannot share further details at this stage, the future of the platform is top of mind,” Nishino said. “We are committed to exploring a new and enhanced way for players to engage with our content and services.”

SVP of finance and corporate development confirmed this later in the call too, saying: “As Nishino-san mentioned, we’re still exploring what the future of our platform would look like.”

She later added: “We’ve reduced traditional cyclicality, as you describe it, by establishing a large ecosystem of players across both the PS5 and PS4 generations, which provides recurring revenues.”

Both individuals have emphasised that the playerbase across PS4, PS5, and PC will be important to maintain even after future hardware is released.

What this potentially means is that PS4 and PS5 players will still continue getting support, whether that’s new game releases, stability updates, PlayStation Plus support, and other things that keep players from feeling like they need to upgrade right away.

We’ve seen this type of cross-generation support in the past. When the PS5 launched, some games were released on both that system and the PS4.

For example, God of War Ragnarök and Horizon Forbidden West were both cross-generational games.

It’s very likely that this will be the same between the PS5 and PS6, until it gets to a point that games practically can’t run at all on the earlier hardware without major compromises.

Still, it seems that we could be closer to the next generation of PlayStation than we previously thought.