The launch of Sony’s PS6, the company’s upcoming console generation, appears to be in the works already. According to a classified document from the company, it will take place around 2027, giving the PS5 a rough life cycle of seven years.
To compare, PS4 launched in November 2013, exactly seven years before PS5.
The partially redacted document was made public today as part of the UK’s ongoing thorough investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority into Microsoft’s proposed $68 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a move Sony has vehemently opposed. While this will offer Xbox games like Overwatch, Diablo, and World of Warcraft, Sony’s major concern is Call of Duty, a game with such a sizable fan following that it might encourage a switchover of consoles on a huge scale.
The document reads:
Microsoft has offered to continue making Activision’s games available on PlayStation only until 2027… By the time SIE launched the next generation of its PlayStation console (which is likely to occur around [redacted]), it would have lost access to Call of Duty and other Activision titles, making it extremely vulnerable to consumer switching and subsequent degradation in its competitiveness,” reads PlayStation’s argument. “Even assuming that SIE had the ability and resources to develop a similarly successful franchise to Call of Duty, it would take many, many years and billions of dollars to create a challenger to Call of Duty – and the example of EA’s Battlefield shows that any such efforts would more than likely be unsuccessful.
Microsoft has stated that it intends to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation well beyond 2027. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox, stated last month that he was eager to continue releasing COD on Sony systems “as long as there’s a PlayStation out there to ship to.”
