PS6 delay could be an opportunity for Sony to finally get weird again

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Sony was considering delaying the release of the PlayStation 6 until 2028 or 2029 due to the AI-fueled chip shortage. In years past, the prospect of being denied a taste of the latest and greatest new tech as soon as possible would have been greeted with the fury of an angry mob. But something’s different this time around.

Social media reactions to the news of a potentially years-long delay to the launch of PS6 have ranged from indifference to relief. “talk of a PS6 makes me physically ill, what do you even mean?? nothing has even happened with the PS5 and you want us to shell out another $600 or more for even fewer games??? oh my god, you MUST be joking,” wrote one X user. Another wrote, “truth be told we could wait til like 2035 for a PS6 lmao.”

The ninth console generation has been like no other, due to the pandemic, widespread hardware shortages, skyrocketing budgets, and ever-lengthening development cycles. Moving into the sixth year since the PS5 launched, console exclusives are few and far between. Most third-party games now have to be multiplatform to be profitable, and most of Sony’s major first-party titles eventually get a PC port — even if it takes a little longer than some players might like.

The PlayStation 5 has sold more than 92 million units as of February 2026, making it the eighth-best selling console of all time. Yet for many players, the PS5 era has felt like a mixed bag — even a failure — due to the slow trickle of blockbuster first-party games. Technologically lightweight “forever games” like Roblox, Fortnite, and Minecraft remain stubbornly parked atop the charts when it comes to weekly, monthly, and yearly engagement. Grand Theft Auto 6, perhaps the most anticipated game of all time and certainly one that will hold heavy sway in measuring the success of this generation, remains many months away, with near-total radio silence from developer Rockstar Games. So it’s understandable why many cash-strapped gamers view the prospect of waiting two or three more years before new hardware as more of a relief than a disappointment.

Sony being hemmed in on the hardware side does present some promising possibilities — though certainly not inevitabilities — on the software side. A protracted PS5 lifespan gives in-house studios a much-needed moment to experiment with smaller-scale games that won’t take six or seven years to complete, only to launch to an unimpressed audience long after a trend has faded. It’s an opportunity to let smaller teams revisit existing IP in new ways, like God of War Son of Sparta. And it’s a chance to reclaim some of the endearingly weird, risk-taking qualities the company displayed throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

In an interview with Polygon last November, long before any of these PS6 delay rumors were making the rounds, former PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden argued that publishers and developers needed to give greater attention to the AA space. “We’ve really lost variety. We’ve lost the dynamic range of what gaming used to be, where you could have Metal Gear Solid on one hand and PaRappa the Rapper on the other hand, all happening at the same time,” he said. “When you have game budgets that go into triple-digit millions, which AAA does now for most publishers, risk tolerance goes to zero.”

Nintendo has dominated the console space for nearly a decade without needing to rely on boasting about teraflops or making water look as wet as it could possibly be. It would be thrilling to see Sony take a page from the same playbook after all this time. With Astro Bot claiming 2024’s biggest prize at The Game Awards, we’ve seen that Sony can have major success with a savvy nostalgia play at the AA scale. There are plenty of neglected franchises in the PlayStation stable that deserve a second look, like Wipeout, Syphon Filter, Infamous, and Sly Cooper. Heck, an international revival of the Japan-only summer vacation sim Boku no Natsuyasumi could finally be Sony’s slice of the cozy game cash-cow!

Or maybe we’ll just get a PS5 Pro Plus, a price hike for PlayStation Plus subscriptions, and more Last of Us remasters. But let’s hope for smaller — and stranger! — things instead.