Sony CEO Says PlayStation 6 Launch Date Remains Undecided

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki confirmed in a series of interviews with The Wall Street Journal that the company has not yet decided on a release date or price for the PlayStation 6. Totoki cited a volatile manufacturing environment as the primary cause of the uncertainty, specifically noting that high demand from artificial intelligence companies building data centers has driven up the cost of memory and GPUs.

These supply shortages are expected to persist into fiscal year 2027, forcing Sony to simulate various business model changes to remain viable. While industry rumors and analysts have suggested launch windows ranging from 2027 to 2029, Totoki stated the company will continue to observe the situation before committing to a timeframe. Rising production costs suggest the next-generation console will likely require a higher consumer investment than the $400 launch price of the PlayStation 5.

Other strategic shifts are influencing the hardware planning. Sony intends to cease production of physical game discs by January 2028, which may result in a digital-only console to reduce costs. Additionally, reports indicate the company is developing a handheld device codenamed Project Canis, featuring Zen 6c CPU cores and RDNA 5 compute units with backwards compatibility for PS4 and PS5 games. Sony maintains sufficient memory reserves for the current year to prevent PlayStation 5 shortages ahead of the November launch of Grand Theft Auto 6.