Sony has tasted humongous success with its PlayStation 4 gaming console. PS4 has outsold Microsoft’s Xbox One for most of the year by 2-to-1. The Xbox One sales exceeded PlayStation 4 only in November this year. Now all eyes are on the next console PlayStation 5. But a senior executive at Sony says that the next PlayStation could be based in the cloud rather than another hardware console.
PS4 could be the last generation of physical consoles
In an interview with Japanese newspaper Nikkei Keizai Shimbun, Sony Computer Entertainment EVP Masayasu Ito said that there will be a PlayStation 5. It could be a physical console, or it could be a cloud-based platform. The Japanese company has already been pushing into cloud computing. Earlier this year, it launched PlayStation TV console to rival Google’s Chromecast streaming service.
There have already been speculations that PlayStation 4 and Xbox One could be the last generation of physical consoles. In the past few months, Sony has shifted its focus to video game platform from traditional media. Going forward, the company will likely focus more on PlayStation projects such as the Morpheus virtual-reality headset.
PlayStation 5 to arrive sooner than expected
Even if PlayStation 5 is launched as a cloud-based platform, there could still be a physical device that receives video and sound from the remote server. Recently, AMD chief financial officer Devinder Kumar said that both the PlayStation 5 and the next-gen Xbox could arrive sooner than expected. Following the success of PS4, Sony would strive to make PlayStation 5 a success upon launch.
Gaming enthusiasts expect to see PlayStation 5 with 4K video capability, but sans disc drive. By the time PS% is ready for launch, we will have a clear picture of whether virtual reality will be a success. If Sony adds virtually reality to PlayStation 5, it will require a powerful architecture to run virtual reality. Life-cycle of the PlayStation 4 is likely to be considerably shorter than previous generations. So, the PS5 may arrive sooner than expected.
