New documents suggest Sony will release PS6 after 2027

Documents from the CMA’s investigation into the Microsoft/Activision purchase suggest Sony won’t release a PS6 console until after 2027.

The UK’s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority, began Phase 2 of its inquiry into Microsoft’s proposed Activision purchase several weeks ago.

Notably, the regulator means to determine whether or not the acquisition would limit Sony’s ability to compete in the console market.

Call of Duty potentially becoming an Xbox-owned IP remains at the center of such concerns, with Sony recently claiming Microsoft aims to push PlayStation out of the mature-rated shooter space. The back and forth has now revealed more details about the latter’s future hardware plans.

New documents hint at when Sony will release the PS6

Confidential documents Sony Interactive Entertainment submitted to the CMA last month have surfaced online (via Axios reporter Stephen Totilo).

A section of the document wherein Sony argues Call of Duty’s importance to the console market briefly makes mention of post-PS5, next-gen hardware.

According to the excerpt in question, by the time SIE’s prepared to launch a new console, it will have “lost access” to COD and other Activision properties.

Sony adds the release could arrive “around” a certain date, but the specifics in the document are redacted. Totilo posits the redacted date could’ve read as “2027.”

In its reporting, VGC claims Microsoft’s response to the CMA notes the following, “Indeed, the next new generation of consoles [is] not expected to be released before the fall of 2028 at the very earliest.”

Obviously, nothing concrete is set in stone at the time of writing. But it’s interesting that both platform holders estimate another eight-year cycle for this current generation of consoles.

And given how the global pandemic affected the industry and console sales, it doesn’t seem too farfetched to assume the PS6 and next Xbox release are more than eight years away.