PlayStation: Analyst Shares Good News for PS4 Owners

The PS5 is selling like hotcakes, despite supply constraints, leaving PS4 owners worried about the [...]

The PS5 is selling like hotcakes, despite supply constraints, leaving PS4 owners worried about the future of the platform and how long Sony will support it. That said, according to one industry analyst, PlayStation isn't leaving behind PS4 owners anytime soon, largely because it's too big of a financial gamble. In other words, don't expect too many PS5 exclusives anytime soon.

"They cannot really ignore the PS4 until they have enough PS5s to really cover enough units that they think they can make money on a game," said industry analyst Michael Pachter while speaking about Sony's support of the PS4 during an interview with Gaming Bolt. "You wanna sell about 3 million units just to break even, and if you don't have more than 7-8 million PS5s or 10 million PS5s out there, you just can't do it. There will always be exclusives early on in a console's cycle because they want people to buy the hardware. So it's chicken and egg, you know, you've gotta sell some eggs at a discount to get people to buy the chicken."

Pachter continued, noting he thinks Sony will continue to support the PS4 through 2023:

"That's really what goes on on the exclusives. But on bigger games, if they want to sell 20 million units, they've gotta make it on old and new consoles. Truthfully, I think they'll support the PS4 through 2023. Ten years. So I think you'll probably start to see more [PS5] exclusives in 2022, and probably all exclusives in 2023."

If Pachter, one of the industry's most veteran analysts, is right, then it suggests that games like the next God of War and possibly Marvel's Spider-Man 2, will be cross-gen releases. That said, for now, take all of this analysis and speculation with a grain of salt because that's all it is, analysis and speculation.

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