Last updated on May 13, 2026
Sony finally said out loud what the industry has been whispering for months. During the company’s fiscal year 2025 earnings briefing earlier this month, Sony President and CEO Hiroki Totoki addressed questions about the PlayStation 6 with unusual candor. “We have not yet decided on at what timing we will launch the new console, or at what prices,” Totoki said. “We would like to really observe and follow the situation.”
That is not a statement from a company on track for a 2027 launch.
What Is Actually Causing the Delay
The problem is not PlayStation specific. It is an industry-wide crisis that has been building since late 2024.
The tech industry is dealing with what insiders have started calling “RAMageddon,” a shortage driven almost entirely by the insatiable demand for memory chips from AI data centres. The price of 16GB of DDR RAM surged by approximately 515% in just a few months, while 512GB of NAND storage costs rose by nearly 479%.
Making the situation worse, Micron announced it is exiting the consumer market in 2026, removing one of the major memory suppliers from the equation at the worst possible time.
Totoki confirmed that memory prices are expected to remain very high through Financial Year 2027, because supply shortages are not going away anytime soon. Sony is increasing investment in its next-generation platform at the same time as it figures out how to navigate those costs.
What the Timeline Actually Looks Like Now
The traditional seven-year console cycle that guided the PS5’s 2020 launch would have placed the PS6 in holiday 2027. Early leaks from credible insiders, including YouTuber Moore’s Law Is Dead and AMD hardware specialist KeplerL2, supported that timeline, citing internal documents that showed production potentially starting in mid-2027 for a fall launch.
In January 2026, MST International senior analyst David Gibson warned that while Sony’s existing memory inventory would shield it from short-term impact, rising RAM costs could become a serious issue in the fiscal year ending March 2027, and noted that the PS6’s release is therefore likely to be delayed longer than many expected.
Then in February 2026, Bloomberg published a report citing anonymous sources familiar with Sony’s plans, stating that Sony is now considering pushing back the debut of its next PlayStation console to 2028 or even 2029.
As of May 2026, prediction markets show only about 25% of bettors believe Sony will reveal the PS6 before 2027.
What We Know About the Hardware
Sony has said nothing officially about PS6 specs. What exists comes from leakers and AMD documentation.
The PS6 is expected to feature GDDR7 RAM offering approximately 640 GB/s bandwidth, a 43% increase over the PS5’s 448 GB/s. On the GPU side, AMD’s next-generation RDNA 5 architecture will be used, with rasterization performance roughly three times that of the base PS5, pushing the teraflop count from 10.28 TFlops to somewhere between 34 and 40 TFlops.
Connectivity upgrades include HDMI 2.2, which supports resolutions up to 10K at 120Hz, and USB4 Version 2.0.
One of the more unexpected rumours is that Sony is planning to launch a dedicated gaming handheld alongside or shortly after the PS6, internally dubbed “Project Canis,” with Bloomberg first reporting the concept in 2024 and multiple leakers since adding hardware detail.
The Price Question
Pricing discussions centre on keeping the console accessible, with some leaks suggesting Sony aims for a launch price below $700, possibly closer to the original PS5’s $499 to $549 range adjusted for inflation. Achieving that while incorporating premium components is part of what is making the timing so difficult to commit to.
Where Things Stand
Sony is not ready to commit to anything. The RAM crisis has no clear end date, and the company is watching the market before locking in a launch window or price. If confirmed, the delay would mark the longest gap between PlayStation generations and could hand Microsoft an opening if its next Xbox, Project Helix, targets an earlier window.
For PS5 owners, the practical takeaway is simple. The current generation has more runway than expected. There is no rush.
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