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One analyst believes that Sony is readying the PlayStation 5 for release in 2018 – but we respectfully disagree. Macquarie Capital Securities forecaster Damian Thong told The Wall Street Journal that Sony's next-gen system could drop as early as the second half of next year, with his accurate PS4 Pro and PS4 Slim predictions lending to his credibility.

But we reckon it's pretty clear the Japanese giant is working on a three year cycle right now, with last year's hardware line refresh likely to carry things until at least 2019. It's possible that the company may namedrop a new console next year, but even that seems unlikely from where we're sitting – it's only going to impede sales of its current crop of consoles.

Looking at the company's software slate, we reckon it's got enough to keep the PS4 well serviced for a good couple of years yet – and that's just taking into account the things we know about. Internally, it may be starting to look to a new generation – Horizon: Zero Dawn 2 probably will be on brand new hardware, for example – but don't expect it to make that information public for a good while yet.

[source wsj.com]