The PlayStation 5 won’t launch in 2019 or early 2020, Sony has confirmed, with the PS5 release date not falling within the next 12 months. Sony made the announcement as part of its end-of-year financial results, in which the company posted impressive profits for the previous financial year.
Sony has already revealed several details pertaining to its next-gen PlayStation console, detailing its specs and several key details in a recent interview with Wired. Now Sony has also alluded to when the console will launch, stating that it won’t be arriving within the next year.
Sony’s comments on the PS5 launch were shared by the Wall Street Journal’s Takashi Mochizuki, who revealed that there would be “No next-gen PlayStation launch over [the] next 12 months.”
This means that Sony wouldn’t be releasing the PS5 until at least May 2020. Traditionally, PlayStation consoles have been launched ahead of the holiday season; both the PS4 and PS3 were launched in November. However, the PS2 was launched in March, so Sony could revert back to an earlier launch for its next console.
If so, this could indicate that Sony is looking to put a gap between the launch of the PS5 and the next Xbox. While Microsoft hasn’t announced the release date for its upcoming console, it has only ever launched consoles in November, which suggests that its new system would once again make its way to store shelves just ahead of Christmas. However, Sony hasn’t confirmed the exact launch window for its console, so this is purely speculation at this point.
Sony also stated that it would be investing the difference between its 2016/17 and 2018/19 profits into the development of the new PlayStation console. This amounts to 31.1 billion yen (roughly $280 million), in what has been an incredible year for the company. Shipping 17.8 million consoles within the past financial year, Sony fell just short of the 19 million PS4s it shopped in the previous year. Considering the current-gen PlayStation console is reaching the end of its life cycle, that it continues to achieve huge profitability for Sony is something the company will be looking to maintain with its next-gen offering.
