As fans (okay, okay, and us journalists too) grasp at literally the smallest mention of the PS5, Sony even briefly mentioning the console and its plans for the remainder of the year turns out to be big news. During its annual strategy briefing today, Sony finally addressed the elephant in the room. No, it wasn’t to announce the date when it plans to show off the next-gen console or reveal any new features. In fact, there weren’t really any new details to speak of.
Sony CEO Kenichiro Yoshida simply said that the PS5 is still on track for holiday 2020 and the company has plans to “introduce a compelling lineup of titles [for PS5] soon.” The quote gained traction when Nibel (@nibellion) posted it on Twitter.
Just announced at the Sony Corporate Strategy Meeting:
“We plan to introduce a compelling lineup of titles [for PS5] soon” pic.twitter.com/OdW96vzYBI
— Nibel (@Nibellion) May 19, 2020
Of course, “soon” could mean any number of things, but it does seem to point to the “early June” window that most credible reports are saying right now. Much of the Sony corporate strategy meeting avoided directly talking about the next-gen console strategy (ironically), but there were a number of key metrics to pay attention to that could continue to hint at Sony’s frame of mind.
Central to this is a focus on PlayStation Now growth and calling attention to Remote Play and its increased usage, a service that Sony pioneered for console audiences through the Vita (and now available via PC, iOS, and other platforms). The idea here is that cloud streaming will be a key pillar next-gen in some fashion, given its accelerated growth and usage this gen.
So fear not, PlayStation faithful. Sony has some things to show “soon.” Whether this means “early June” soon or something else entirely remains to be seen (the console teardown that Mark Cerny teased in his talk back in March still hasn’t happened). But the timeline remains relatively on track compared to the PS4’s marketing window, which didn’t see the big console unveiling until June 2013 at Sony’s E3 press conference. That date was June 10th, 2013, to be exact, with the console coming out five months and five days later on November 15th, 2013.
Even if the reported June 4th PS5 reveal date is delayed a full week, that would put it on Thursday, June 11th, still technically “early June” and almost perfectly lining up with the PS4’s reveal timeline (which would also put speculation for the PS5 release date to be mid-to-late November, if Sony wants it out ahead of Black Friday and doesn’t push it further into the holiday season).
So far the only PS5 “gameplay” we’ve seen came in the form of the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo, which showcased a playable demonstration of what the upcoming next-gen iteration of the engine is capable of. While a few games have been technically announced for the PS5, we have yet to see any games actually running in realtime on the system. According to Sony, that’s all set to change “soon.”
