PlayStation 5 Pro or PS6? The rumors outline a new scenario

2023 will be a very important year for PlayStation 5, since it will be the year in which the latest generation console from Sony will begin to give its best thanks to the increasingly widespread abandonment of the now old generation PS4. But that’s not all, because 2023 will also be the year in which – according to increasingly pressing rumors – Sony will bring the first revision of the console to marketgoing to propose a single model that will allow to reduce production costs and further improve the availability of the platform, since it will be a version equipped with a removable reader, therefore able to cover both segments for which it now has need two models, the reader version and the digital edition.

From the PS5 2023 and the well-known insider recently spoke about the future of the platform Tom Hendersonwho shared a very interesting thread on Twitter and able to outline a possible scenario hitherto unpublished: the total absence of a PS5 Pro. As usual, we remind you that these are rumors and considerations of an insider, but Henderson’s words deserve to be read and analyzed as he has always had good coverage of everything that happens in the Sony sphere.

Before going into the most interesting discussion, it is good to spend a few more words on the next revision of PS5, since Henderson himself mentions it and makes one thing clear: it is not a slim version, but a a second generation of PlayStation 5.

This means that the next version will not complement the models currently on the market and will not represent a version reduced of the current offering, but will completely replace it, so Sony is expected not to use particular acronyms (such as “slim”) to distinguish it from the PS5s available to date.

In addition to that, Henderson also touches on the subject of PlayStation 5 Pro, declaring himself not entirely convinced that this enhanced version could materialize over the generationsince the Japanese house could point directly towards the release of the PlayStation 6.

At the basis of his skepticism there are several elements, such as the fact that the potential of PlayStation 5 has not yet been fully exploited, but also that of not having heard many rumors about PS5 Pro and, in contrast, to have heard most about PlayStation 6.

Obviously the rumors we mention are not those accessible to everyone through the rumor channels, but those of Henderson’s sources, from which it seems to emerge that PS5 Pro could be a very low priority project for Sony, which is already looking to the next one generation. We have also recently had the opportunity to have a first indication of the time window of the next geni.e. 2027.

Henderson’s words are undoubtedly very interesting, as question a fact that up to now has been taken for granted, or a mid-generation hardware refresh, capable of updating the platform with better and more up-to-date features. Given the age of PS5, it is possible to hypothesize that this update could take place between 2024 and 2025, so as not to be too close to the launch of the next console, but not too close to that of PS5.

The launch of PS4 Profor example, happened right in the middle of the generation, i.e. at the end of 2016, and allowed Sony to continue the second half of the 10s with a machine decidedly more powerful but also linked to the original limits of PS4including the use of a Jaguar CPU, already obsolete at the time.

While PS4 Pro has received a good reception from critics, it is good to highlight how this specific PS4 variant has not been all that popular with the general publicwho has often preferred to turn to the basic version in order to save something and also in the name of a little qualitative difference perceived. On the other hand all the games continued to be primarily offered with the base PS4 configuration in mindleaving the Pro alone marginal improvements in terms of resolution and frame rate, aspects that not everyone has been able to justify an increased list price.

There is no indication of PS4 Pro sales figures, but we can try to hypothesize them on the basis of some statistics from several years ago which indicated that the PS4 Pro shares were equal to 20% of the total PS4 sold from the moment of its release onwards (therefore from November 2016). At that time PlayStation 4 had reached around 50 million units sold, while today we are at 117 million. This means that since the release of the PS4 Pro to date, Sony has sold around 67 million PS4s, of which around 13.4 million could be PS4 Pro (we repeat: the calculation is not precise as there is no official data, but it is a plausible estimate), or just under 12% of the total sold throughout the life of the console.

All in all, this is a small slice, which also opens up the possibility that Sony doesn’t think it’s all that profitable to release a mid-gen update for the PS5. On the other hand, unlike PS4, PlayStation 5 has arrived on the market with hardware much more in line with that of the historical period in which it was marketed, while the last generation flagship had already outdated components – CPU above all even in 2013.

In hindsight, PS4 Pro has not been able to significantly affect the gaming scenario – an eventuality that we had already begun to explore in one of our 2018 editorials – which is why it does not surprise us that there is talk of a possible abandonment of the mid-gen idea in favor of a greater expenditure of energy and resources towards the next generation. Also because the launch of a PS5 Pro involves significant increases in terms of research and development and production expenses (right now that Sony is about to launch the unique model) which may not be fully justified given the limited commercial success of the PS4 Pro.

On the other hand, even a technically obsolete platform like Nintendo Switch seems to be able to conclude a life cycle without receiving the long-awaited (and in this case necessary) mid-gen hardware update, then there’s no reason why PS5 can’t complete its cycle under current conditions.

With these considerations of ours we don’t want to say that we are sure of the non-release of PlayStation 5 Probut only offer you a point of view that makes Henderson’s scenario plausiblewhich at first might seem like too much strange to be realistic, but which, when placed in a broader context, appears at least credible.