With rumours suggesting Sony will unveil the PlayStation 5 in the summer, industry experts speculated that the console could reach shelves as early as 2020.
Hate to break it to you, but that's probably not true. According to an analysis report on Sony’s finances by Japanese research institute Rakuten Securities, we’re much more likely to get our hands on it a year later in 2021.
The evaluation is largely down to the raft of major AAA games Sony has announced for 2020, including The Last of Us Part II and Ghosts of Tsushima, and the lack of impetus to rush those titles onto their upcoming console and create unnecessary competition.
According to Rakuten, the Japanese tech giants are more likely to give more time to third-party developers so that they can fully immerse themselves in the next-gen capabilities of the PlayStation 5 and avoid an underwhelming first wave of games.
Hopes are still high that the PS5 will be fully backwards-compatible thanks to a recent patent filed by Sony. Gear Nuke reported that the tech company are working on “simulation of legacy bus operation for backward compatibility”. The patent also mentions “enhanced simulation”
What's more, reports suggest that the console will be able to play games from every generation of PlayStation, thanks to 'processor ID spoofing'. One thing's for sure: the rumour mill is about to go into overdrive, and Sony will have a tough time managing expectation for the console – especially after they mysteriously dropped out of June's E3 trade show.
