‘PS6 should release as soon as possible – as a reset for PlayStation’

At first, I wanted to write in about Astro Bot and Concord but then I realised everyone was going to do that and, really, what can you say? Concord was exactly the failure it deserved to be and Astro Bot was exactly as good as you’d expect if you’d played the previous games. Neither of these things should have been surprises to anyone, but somehow they were and Sony seemed the most shocked of all.

I don’t know what they’re going to do now, since admitting mistakes isn’t really something execs are known for, but at the same time all this has been going on there’s been stirrings about the PlayStation 6 being relatively imminent. Nothing very specific but I don’t think we really need any rumours anyway.

Microsoft is talking about a next gen Xbox officially, so if that means it’s arriving in the next year or two Sony aren’t going to wait any longer than that for the PlayStation 6. With Xbox on the ropes the last thing they’ll want to do is give them a chance to recover.

Of course, that’s applying logic and common sense where it may not exist, but assuming Sony isn’t completely crazy they must be well into plans for the PlayStation 6 and it’s probably going to be out by at least 2026.

I’m not interested in the console itself, as I assume any improvement in graphics will be minor. There’s also a good chance it’ll be a portable hybrid, although I’m not sure how they do that and make it more powerful. Microsoft may give a first clue as to how that problem is to be tackled though, so we’ll see how that goes.

Lots of people are saying that it’s too soon for the PlayStation 6 and in theory I agree with them. Since the first two years of this gen basically don’t count, thanks to the pandemic, it’s ridiculous to release a new console now, considering there’s been virtually no new first party games in the last two years either.

Sony has made an absolute disaster of this generation, as far as I’m concerned. They’ve managed to be both obsessed by live service games and incapable of making any. They wanted 12 by 2026 and Concord was the first one… and it lasted precisely two weeks.

One theory, that I find believable, is that Jim Ryan ordered all the first party studios to make live service games, then he was kicked out, and now they’re going back to making single-player games. I don’t know how true that is but clearly nothing is being produced at the moment and nothing is currently scheduled for the future… these things take time to turn around.

Whatever is coming out next year and beyond it’s hard to believe it’ll be more than one or two big name games, maybe Wolverine and something else. The whole conveyor belt of games, including the process of announcing them and looking forward to them, is completely broken. It needs to be reset.

This whole generation has been a complete wash for PlayStation and they need to start over. So, the obvious thing is to push for the PlayStation 6 as soon as possible. Get it out as soon as you can and have a good launch line-up with a steady stream of new games after that. In other words, exactly what we have been lacking the last several years.

It doesn’t matter what the PlayStation 6 is or does, it just needs to be an excuse to draw a line under the current mess and do something better. Ideally it would see Sony end its damaging obsession with PC games too. The appeal of a console is greatly lessened when you can get the same game on other formats, you only have to look at Xbox to see that.

I’m assuming Sony don’t just want to be a PC game publisher, so if they have higher aspirations I strongly hope they will release the PlayStation 6 as soon as possible and get back to being a proper console manufacturer and video game maker.

By reader Johnson