The PlayStation 5 Era Has Just Begun, and That's a Problem for Sony

A few weeks ago, in an interview published in Nikkei, Japan's leading financial newspaper and one with the widest global coverage, Capcom President Haruhiro Tsujimoto cited the high price of PlayStation 5 and its services as one of the main reasons for the difficulties Monster Hunter Wilds is facing.

According to Capcom's President, the price of PlayStation 5 — which has gradually risen in recent months, setting an absolute record in the industry's history — now represents a huge obstacle for potential buyers, especially younger ones, who cannot afford to spend such sums to play.

Behind Tsujimoto's words lies a clear desire to shift some of Capcom's blame — such as the scarcity of endgame content and less-than-optimal PC performance — onto PlayStation, also riding the common sentiment that the price of Sony's console is currently too high for a product that entered the market 5 years ago.

But these words also tell us something else; including the fact that the President of a third-party company can criticize Sony's strategies in the pages of a top-tier financial magazine.
And it is precisely the strategies implemented by Sony in recent years that have caused its economic and political strength to gradually decline, allowing third parties to make such significant accusations against the Japanese company.

It is not surprising, therefore, that in the offices of Tokyo (Sony) and San Mateo (PlayStation), plans are being made to regain the strength that made PlayStation the undisputed queen of the gaming sector.

If you don't like what's being said, change the subject!

This is the advice Donald Draper gives a client in Mad Men who is dealing with public criticism of his product: when you can't control the conversation, move it to ground favorable to you.

And looking closely, it seems that Sony's executives have taken this advice literally.
At a time when criticism of PlayStation 5 is becoming increasingly pressing, Sony has started talking more and more about PlayStation 6, with President Hideaki Nishino explaining in June 2025, during a meeting with investors, how the next console will help the company overcome current difficulties.

Looking at the criticisms from players and critics towards the current gen, it's not so wrong to think that Sony can't wait to put the PlayStation 5 experience behind it and kick off a new generation that could represent a new year zero.

Yet things, as usual, are far more complicated, and the launch of a new generation, which some leaks suggest should happen between 2027 and 2028, could represent a harakiri for Sony.

Few games on PlayStation 5, but is that true?

Looking at the raw data, which by its nature has always been synonymous with judgment, in the last 4 years, the number of exclusive titles released on PlayStation 5 has not been significantly lower than the number of exclusives that arrived on PlayStation 4 in the 2016-2019 four-year period — a period, incidentally, when Sony's console was at its production peak.

Between 2016 and 2020, there were 13 major Sony exclusives: Uncharted 4, Ratchet & Clank, The Last Guardian, Horizon Zero Dawn, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, God Of War, Detroit Become Human, Spider-Man, Days Gone, Dreams, TLOU II, Ghost Of Tsushima, and Spider-Man Miles Morales.
At the same time, if we look at the 2021-2025 four-year period, Sony has offered players the same number of exclusives: Demon's Souls — yes, I know it's 2020, but it was the first PS5 exclusive — Returnal, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Deathloop, Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West, God Of War Ragnarok, Spider-Man 2, Helldivers 2, Stellar Blade, Astro Bot, Death Stranding 2, and the upcoming Ghost Of Yotei.

Looking at this list, some might raise 2 objections: many of the games listed for PS5 were also released on PS4, and some of these are not first-party Sony titles; and these objections would be totally legitimate if we lived in 2018, but unfortunately, for better or worse, we are in 2025, a historical moment when the video game market is facing a true revolution.

Understanding Sony's current situation requires a much broader perspective than just criticizing first-party titles; it touches on a whole series of factors, planned and unplanned, which, through stumbles and successes, have made it possible to state today, in the second half of 2025, that the PlayStation 5 era has just begun.

The Pax Romana of video games

From the reign of Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Aurelius in 180 AD, Rome experienced its moment of greatest prosperity, with the various internal states of the empire accepting Roman domination based on Do Ut Des — give and take — which brought general prosperity to every corner of the Empire.

What many do not remember is that to achieve the Pax Romana, Rome was subject to internal conflicts and betrayals, even leading to the fall of the Republic.

Now, I'm not here to give an ancient history lesson — which would certainly be fun — however, the path that led to the Pax Romana helps me build a very romantic parallel with the console war that the video game world has experienced since the 80s.

A console war that gradually saw the number of consoles on the market decrease, until 2025; the year in which PlayStation established itself as the home console par excellence and Microsoft decided to become a full-fledged producer.
A situation that promises gaming prosperity, allowing PC players to get their hands on PlayStation exclusives and owners of Sony's console to enjoy franchises like Gears Of War.

The end of the console war was not a painless outcome, but rather a mix of wrong decisions and strokes of luck that affected both parties involved and meant that there was no real winner, but rather a temporary division of the market.
Sony established PlayStation as the home console, while Microsoft secured the PC market — which is larger than the console market — and dominance in the cloud gaming market.

All thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic

There is an exact reason why the concept of the Console War was overcome during this generation.
The Covid-19 pandemic that followed the launch of the current-gen made gaming one of the main forms of entertainment during lockdown, growing the user base across the globe.

This increase in players intersected with the growth of subscription services like Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Plus, which, given the growing numbers, became a crucial part of Sony's and Microsoft's strategies, thus taking the competition, which until then had been limited to hardware, to a new level: that of services.

However, the pandemic also brought with it the semiconductor crisis and the consequent difficulty in finding current-gen consoles, so many remained on or switched to last-gen consoles — especially PlayStation 4 — only now moving to the current-gen.

This meant that over the years, we saw titles arrive on the market that, for purely economic reasons, had to be developed for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, with consequent optimization problems and limitations in using the power offered by PS5.
This led to years of cross-gen titles that caused general discontent among players.

A dog chasing its tail

This chain was only broken in 2025, when at the beginning of the year Sony announced that starting from January 2026, the PlayStation Plus service would focus on PlayStation 5.
Over the months, it was then the turn of live service title publishers, such as Genshin Impact or PUBG, who announced plans to discontinue support for the PS4 versions of their titles due to the console's technical limitations.
And strangely, it was in 2025 that many software houses began to produce their games solely for the current gen.

Despite the lower computing power of PS4, it's easy to imagine that these decisions are also a result of the increase in PlayStation 5 unit sales, which reached 80.3 million by June 2025.
An installed base capable of finally sustaining the market without relying on PS4 owners — many of whom also own a PS5.

All of this must then be analyzed in the context that GTA VI will arrive on the market in March 2026 and will push those whom Everett Rogers calls “Laggards” to switch to the current gen, thus leading to a boost in PS5 sales.

And while this represents a huge victory for Sony on one hand, on the other, it risks becoming a self-inflicted wound for the company.

If it's true that PlayStation 6 will be released between 2027 and 2028, those who bought a PlayStation 5 today will hardly buy a new console, thus creating a situation where developers will be forced to develop their titles for both PS5 and PS6, making it impossible to fully exploit the potential of the new console.
A déjà vu.

Put in the PS5, take out the PS5

Of course, there's a segment of the audience, worshipers of 60 FPS at native 4K, who are calling for a new generation of consoles, but this segment seems relatively small when looking at the global market.

The success of Clair Obscure 33, Balatro, Astro Bot, Warhammer 40000, and many other “small” games has shown that players don't necessarily need technical marvels, but rather captivating stories and fun gaming experiences; not to mention that even a double-A game can now offer a very high level of technical achievement.

Economically speaking, the development of triple-A games is no longer synonymous with stratospheric sales — just ask Bioware and Ubisoft for more information.
According to Newzoo's annual report — which I discussed in an episode of Just Play — the most played games in 2024 are all at least 6 years old, demonstrating that such technological evolution is not yet necessary.

And even looking at technical marvels, Death Stranding 2 has shown us how the current gen can offer extraordinary performance with careful optimization work.
I'll conclude my rant by looking at Nintendo, whose Switch 2 is certainly not an explosion of technology, yet here we are talking about its success.

Like a modern Tantalus, Sony finds itself in an ideal situation: its console is in the homes of the majority of players and is ready to welcome the avalanche of opportunities brought by GTA VI. Yet, it doesn't seem enough.

Attributing the consequences of wrong strategies to PlayStation 5 helps create an enemy in the consumer's mind, and proposing a new console is equivalent to defeating that enemy.
The fundamental problem is that this would only represent another one of these wrong strategies.

PlayStation 6 would experience the same problems as PlayStation 5, if not greater.
This is because the PlayStation 5 era has just begun and is more splendid than ever, and it seems that Sony is the only one who hasn't realized it.