Friday, May 8th 2026
PlayStation 6 Price and Launch Date Remain Uncertain in Face of DRAM Pricing Uncertainty
Despite earlier rumors speculating about both the upcoming PlayStation 6's pricing and supposed launch date, it has come to light in a recent investor call that Sony has yet to actually decide on either of those aspects of the new console's launch. When asked about the progress of the next-gen console, Sony CEO, Hiroki Totoki, said that "Looking at the current circumstances, the memory price is also expected to be very high FY 2027, because there will still be a shortage of supply," going on to explain that "We have not yet decided on at what timing we will launch the new console or at what prices, so we would like to really observe and follow the situation."
Sony isn't the only console maker struggling with pricing. The Xbox Helix is expected to launch at a price of around $1,000 when it eventually hits the market, and, while the rumor mill has nothing to say about Nintendo's next console launch this early in the Switch 2's lifecycle, there has been talk of a potential price increase for the Nintendo Switch 2—an issue worsened by softening US sales. The PS5 itself also recently saw a sizeable price increase, and although Sony didn't provide a justification for the price increases outside of "the global economic landscape," the assumption has largely been that increasing DRAM prices have been to blame for the price increase.
Source:
Sony financial results
Sony isn't the only console maker struggling with pricing. The Xbox Helix is expected to launch at a price of around $1,000 when it eventually hits the market, and, while the rumor mill has nothing to say about Nintendo's next console launch this early in the Switch 2's lifecycle, there has been talk of a potential price increase for the Nintendo Switch 2—an issue worsened by softening US sales. The PS5 itself also recently saw a sizeable price increase, and although Sony didn't provide a justification for the price increases outside of "the global economic landscape," the assumption has largely been that increasing DRAM prices have been to blame for the price increase.
19 Comments on PlayStation 6 Price and Launch Date Remain Uncertain in Face of DRAM Pricing Uncertainty
Its a console that isnt needed anyway. The only people to benefit from it would be dev's who can then be even more lazy.
It's a massive APU die similar to Strix Halo, it would be a $1000 console before the RAM price increase.
For 899 USD!
Also, we need to be able to install any OS on it that we want!
:roll:
The PS6 chip can end up quite a bit smaller than the Strix Halo APU since it won't need the big MALL cache (since it will be using faster GDDR7 ram), and probably won't have the giant NPU Halo has wasting die space. Ditching those leaves room to spare for the CPU cores and then some.
Not everyone has these standards of course, I'm sure that most users are satisfied with PS5's performance. But the thing is, if you're satisfied with the PS5, then who cares if they launch the PS6? Just don't buy it, devs won't leave the +80 million player base of PS5 anytime soon. Why is everyone forced to accept 30 FPS just because some people are happy with it? Why can't Sony offer something better for the minority that cares about 4K, Ray Tracing or 60 FPS? I don't see the issue with releasing new consoles.Mark Cerny said in the PS5 Pro presentation that 75% of players prefer "Performance mode" over "Fidelity Mode". So 60 FPS is a well appreciated feature to say the least, players are willing to sacrifice graphics just to get 60 FPS after all. But downgrading graphics can only take you so far with that CPU bottleneck.
The PS5 for its age is in the best place ever, every older gen had clear resource constraints at this point in their life, but the PS5 doesnt, its got native nand storage, finally is on a modern CPU, and enough GPU grunt for modern games.
The biggest issue is software developers.