Analyst: PlayStation 4 Pro Could Become Sony’s Standard System, With PS5 To Follow

If there's someone that's not a stranger to posting his analysis on the video games industry, it's Wedbush Securities' Michael Pachter. He's made a number of predictions in the past, with some that ended up being right, like Nintendo announcing a Metroid game at E3 (in fact, they announced two, including this past week's release of Metroid: Samus Returns). He's also gotten a few wrong, though, but he continues to try and keep a bead on the industry.

This time around, he's focused on Sony, and looking at their business model regarding both the PlayStation 4 and its 4K-friendly counterpart, the PlayStation 4 Pro. Pachter recently stopped by the 1099 Podcast to talk about what he feels is next for Sony, and while he still thinks the PlayStation 5 will come sooner rather than later, he did have some thoughts on the direction of the Pro.

It turns out that he feels that the Pro will become Sony's standard business model of the PlayStation, though he didn't quite give an exact time frame. "If I had to bet I'd say 2020. Sony is making so much money on PS4 that I think that they'll continue to make as long as they can milk it. I think that the natural extension of that is that the PS4 Pro just becomes the default PS4 and they just knock that price down to $250 if they can."

He continued, this time talking a bit about whatever Sony's next hardware will be. "PS5 is probably going to be their real 4K device, it feels to me like they are not going to launch the PS5 until sales momentum for the PS4 slows and it just hasn't yet. Certainly get through 2017 and 2018, I just don't see it slowing in 2018 which would prompt them to release something in 2019. If it slows in 2019 then they will probably launch it in 2020.

"You can very safely trade in your Xbox One and buy and Xbox One X and start saving $10 a month, you'll have some time before you need to trade it in for a PS5."

Whether Pachter is accurate or not is hard to tell. Again, he's been wrong in the past, previously noting that the PlayStation 5 could arrive in 2019. But you never know…

Sony has yet to announce its holiday plans, but we could know more soon enough, between the company's forthcoming Paris Week event in October, and PlayStation Experience in December.