Rumors and reporting have recently been stating the obvious by noting there will be another PlayStation and Xbox. Even the hardware makers themselves have spoken directly about the future in videos posted on their official social channels. History would also dictate that we’re close to the dawn of a new generation. It’s not a secret. But these patterns and rumblings shouldn’t matter because it’s too soon for the PS6 and whatever confusing name Xbox comes up with for its next system.
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Video Games Chronicle reported multiple reputable insiders have pinned 2027 as the planned year for new hardware for both Sony and Microsoft. “Planned” is a key word here since the overall chaos and unpredictability of the world might throw that into disarray. Granted, the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S came out in the throes of the pandemic, but it’s not a given that things won’t slip in the future (or, given the destruction of public health entities, that we won’t see another pandemic in the near future).
And this makes sense from PlayStation’s and Xbox’s perspective because seven years is about the length of previous generations. The distance between PlayStation consoles has always been six or seven years. Xbox is a little more sporadic, given the early death of the original Xbox and subsequent early arrival of the Xbox 360, but the Xbox One generation was seven years long.
The PS5 and Xbox Series X Are Still Plenty Powerful
But history shouldn’t be a binding contract. Seven years of technological advancements in prior generations was rather huge. The technical disparity between the PS1 and PS2 was massive, and that has more or less continued in later generations. Take any game and its next-gen sequel — from Halo 2 to Halo 3 or Ape Escape to Ape Escape 2 — and the jump in visual fidelity is undeniable.
There was an obvious visual signifier that showed why upgrading was necessary, and that also carried over to performance sometimes, too. The PS3 and Xbox 360 generation (especially for the former) was notorious for how poorly many games ran. The hardware analysts at Digital Foundry said this general underperformance was, for the most part, the consoles not being able to support the whims of overreaching developers eager to try out the new technology that generation afforded them. While often capped at 30 frames per second, PS4 and Xbox One games generally did not run as poorly, but they did start to feel long in the tooth in those last few years, especially by the end when 4K resolutions and more advanced tech like ray tracing were starting making those 2013 systems age more rapidly.
Broadly speaking, the PS5 and Xbox Series X are powerful enough to not be in the same predicament. While the visual leap between the last generation and this one has not been as severe as it has been in the past, many games from Returnal to the Doom: The Dark Ages look fantastic. They usually even have a suite of rendering modes that can favor performance or graphical quality, a pleasing holdover from the days of the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.
Obviously, there are always going to be the stuttery messes — Star Wars Jedi: Survivor is still a wreck after many patches — and PC ports will still almost always look better, but these modern games aren’t being outclassed in a way that requires a bump in specs. It’s not like Cronos: The New Dawn or Mortal Kombat 1 look technically deficient, so even though the jump from the PS4 to the PS5 and Xbox One to Xbox Series X|S was less noticeable than usual, the PS5 and Xbox Series X sit at a comfortable nexus of performance and visual quality that makes upgrading in a few years less vital.
This smaller and more detail-oriented jump in technical advancements is already showing itself in the PS5 Pro. Features like ray tracing are impressive, but lighting is often quite realistic anyway. For example, Ghost of Yotei has a ray tracing mode, but the regular lighting in the other modes is more than serviceable. These baby steps forward are partly what made the PS5 Pro a questionable upgrade. Many clowned on the early footage from PlayStation where the newly added details were mostly visible for those who were attentively zooming in. It does (ignoring the few cases where PS5 Pro support has backfired like the Silent Hill 2 remake and, again, Jedi: Survivor) usually look better and open up more graphical options, but it’s hard to sell great games looking ever-so-slightly better at that price point.
Long Development Cycles Should Equal a Longer Console Cycle
Many studios haven’t even gotten a true crack at this generation yet or have barely interacted with it. Some of this stems from how long support for last-gen games has continued on and contributed to “delaying” the release of true “next-gen” experiences, but most of this is because of how lengthy game development has gotten. Naughty Dog is the most obvious example of this, as it has only put out a remake and remaster in this cycle. This is not to diminish the stunning new art in The Last of Us Part I and its many smart yet subtle tweaks or the incredible No Return mode in the remaster of the sequel, but that team is the figurehead of the swath of AAA developers that have yet to put that many games on this batch of hardware, like Bend Studio, Undead Labs, and Rockstar Games. These sit alongside studios that have only put out one game this generation like Bluepoint Games and Halo Studios.
Game development from the biggest teams (and some of the smallest) has only gotten longer, so it only makes sense to throw out the established norms and have the length of the console cycle reflect that. These flagship titles are what bring the most value to these boxes, so only seeing one or two games from an overwhelming portion of studios is likely why there’s a slight malaise looming over this generation.
Naughty Dog proved why players needed a PS3 and made four whole games for it. Epic Games, including co-developing one with People Can Fly, made four Gears of War games for the Xbox 360. That kind of generational gameography just isn’t possible now at that scale, and that difference is keenly felt. Without such consistent output from marquee teams, the hardware loses a bit of its luster, so it makes sense to delay the generation a bit in order to build more of that perceived value massive games like this bring.
Cost Will Likely Be a Huge Hurdle for Both
The knockdown effects of the pandemic also elongated the increasingly longer development cycles and that effect can’t be forgotten. However, it, thanks to corporate greed and inflation, also made money quite a bit tighter and that has only gotten worse. Tariffs have impacted the video game market quite heavily, with all three console manufacturers raising prices on various items in response. Gaming is already an expensive hobby and these price hikes have only made it more pricey.
It’s almost impossible to imagine this no longer being an issue in 2027, especially given how events are unfolding. The Trump administration is still gleefully implementing absurd and careless tariffs, which has had a direct impact on video games. The price of other goods has risen, too, and this is likely only going to make a luxury video game console even less attractive for many on the margins (and probably a decent few outside of them, as well).
With a destructive administration determined to push forward toxic tariffs and initiatives that only make the average person poorer, it becomes even sillier to launch a console that could even top the PS5 Pro’s egregious price. Economic systems take time to build back up, but waiting a few more years could possibly make a new console more economically feasible, something that would undoubtedly require a new administration that doesn’t have such an abysmal slate of economic policies. There is at least a chance a new administration would begin to turn the ship around and make things more affordable, so it seems more wise to bank on that possibility than to hope this current and cruel administration has a complete change of heart.
None of this is to say the PS6 and next Xbox sound boring or are dead on arrival. PS5 lead architect Mark Cerny explained how upcoming technology made with AMD would be geared toward certain techniques that would lead to better ray tracing and more efficiently compressed data. While the explanations were filled with jargon, they sounded like they will empower developers to more reasonably make smoother and prettier games without being limited solely by raw power. But it’s just too early for that. Multiple factors, from the current economic volatility to how these current consoles are still technically savvy, have illustrated why this generation should be longer than the recent norm. These are unprecedented times, so it seems foolish to depend on precedent.
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