Cliff Notes – There shouldn’t ever be a PS6 or new Xbox console – Reader’s Feature
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Diminishing Returns on Generational Upgrades: The advancements in console technology have become increasingly incremental, with each new generation offering less transformative change compared to earlier leaps in gaming history.
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Escalating Development Costs and Time: The financial burden of creating triple-A games has surged, making it difficult for studios to fully utilise potential new hardware, while lengthy development cycles hinder the frequency of new releases.
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Shift Towards Digital and Streaming: As physical game sales decline and streaming technology improves, the necessity for new consoles diminishes, suggesting a potential shift in how gamers access and experience games.
Does there need to be a next generation? (Sony/Microsoft/Metro)
With next generation consoles expected in 2027, a reader argues that both Sony and Microsoft should give up their plans and stick with the current hardware.
There, I said it: there should never be a PlayStation 6 – or another next gen Xbox.
I’ve been gaming for nearly 40 years, from the ZX Spectrum and Game Boy to the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. But the argument for creating another generation of consoles seems as if Sony and Microsoft are more worried about the other getting there first, rather than it being a good idea. Here’s why sticking with the current hardware makes far more sense.
Generational leaps are getting smaller
When I first bought a PlayStation in the mid-90s, the leap from 16-bit systems like the Mega Drive was astonishing. Then the PlayStation 2 brought richer detail and largely eliminated graphical pop-in. The Xbox 360 delivered HD visuals and bigger worlds. But since then, the returns have diminished. Each new generation feels more like a modest refinement than a revolution.
The PlayStation 5’s solid-state drive and controller are its biggest advances and even those aren’t transformative. Would a PlayStation 6 really offer more than another incremental boost? Even this generation took years to hit its stride, with few titles truly showcasing next gen power. Late generation games often rival early ones from the next console. And even developers themselves acknowledge the jump from PlayStation 4 to 5 isn’t that much.
Triple-A game costs are already huge
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Budgets for triple-A games have shot up over past few generations. Spider-Man 2 reportedly cost $300 million to make, while The Last Of Us Part 2 was $220 million and Horizon Forbidden West $212 million. Compare that to PlayStation 2 era titles like The Getaway, which was considered pricey at £5 million. Few publishers can sustain those costs. No matter how powerful a PlayStation 6 might be, very few studios could afford to push it to its limits.
Games take far too long to make
It’s been 12 years since the last GTA – with no sequel until 2026. But the PlayStation 2 era saw new entries almost annually. Franchises like The Elder Scrolls, Fable, and Fallout have suffered similar droughts. High-fidelity graphics and sprawling open worlds take years to produce, leaving long gaps between releases. The Demon’s Souls remake team Bluepoint Games hasn’t launched anything new in five years, and Naughty Dog hasn’t released a wholly new title in half a decade either. Is this likely to get even worse when more demanding hardware slows that process further?
New features are running out
Ray tracing was hyped as a PS5 game changer, yet most players barely notice or care. Throughout console history, flashy tech often fails to live up to its promise – remember the ‘power of the cloud’ on Xbox One or the hard drive on the original Xbox that only Blinx really needed? Even the PlayStation 5’s SSD, one of its best features, has only been meaningfully used in a handful of titles, like Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and The Medium. And PS1 games did not look anything like the dinosaur demo that was packaged with early consoles.
Innovation is being stifled
The PlayStation 5 has faster loading times from the SSD and a noticeably improved controller, while the Xbox Series X/S have game resume from the same point, even after switching the console off. But when hardware leaps stop being exciting, developers have to innovate elsewhere – and that’s a good thing. But marginally prettier graphics don’t justify a whole new generation. This year we are getting 18th instalments of Battlefield and Assassin’s Creed, Call Of Duty 23, and Madden 36. What differences would a PlayStation 6 version of these make? Shiner grass textures? Individual beard hairs? Maybe removing the easy graphics upgrade crutch would push studios to try fresh ideas instead?
It would accelerate the decline of physical games
The PS5 Pro already released without a disc drive, and standalone drives soon sold out and shot up in price. Physical games have already significantly dropped as a percentage of sales, but if a higher percentage of gamers don’t have a disc drive more publishers won’t even release games physically. For generations of gamers a trip to the second-hand games shop or searching end-of-line sales of reduced titles have been an inexpensive way to try new titles. But if everything is digital then there’s less incentive for publishers to reduce prices.
Manufacturers selling hardware at a loss are a thing of the past
New consoles cost more to build than most consumers are willing to pay, even before R&D costs are considered. Sony and Microsoft are increasingly unwilling to sell at a loss, meaning already rising prices could skyrocket. PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S units already cost more than they did at launch, when in previous generations they reduced multiple times and gained a new audience with each one.
A meaningful upgrade could easily push the PlayStation 6 close to £1,000. That’s not hypothetical, the Asus ROG Ally and similar portable Xbox devices already approach that range, and reports suggest Microsoft’s next console could do the same.
Streaming is catching up
When my old TV broke last year, I replaced it with one that includes Amazon Luna. It’s not perfect, but it can stream current gen games with minimal lag. As internet speeds rise, that experience will only improve – and could make owning a console optional altogether. Or a gamer could stream the few titles too modern for their console while playing everything else natively.
Xbox isn’t the rival it used to be
Outside the Xbox 360 era, PlayStation has outsold Xbox every generation in the UK. Microsoft’s strategy now focuses on flexibility with their anything’s an Xbox campaign. Meanwhile rumours of cancelled hardware or what would effectively be Xbox branded PCs suggest the brand is less about competing with PlayStation and more about creating ecosystem to play Microsoft owned games. So why should Sony feel pressured to keep racing them? They could even allow Game Pass on the PlayStation 5 and take a cut of it like they do with Ubisoft+ and GTA+.
Of course, neither company will listen. The PlayStation 6 and next Xbox will arrive, cost a small fortune, offer very little that’s genuinely new, and sell out at launch. But bigger questions remain: will they outsell either the PlayStation 4 or 5, or will they deliver experiences that truly couldn’t exist on today’s consoles? Probably not.
By reader Jean-Paul Satire
Do you want to a new generation? (Sony/Microsoft/Metro)
The reader’s features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro.
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