Forget The PS6? Why PlayStation's Ex-CEO Wants Sony To Target Another PS5

Former PlayStation CEO Shawn Layden made a rather interesting comment on The Trophy Room podcast this week, stating that "the innovation needs to come not from making PS6 for $1200. It's to make another PS5 for $300. Now, that would be true innovation."

While this idea may be unthinkable to some, it is hard to look at the current state of the market and not yearn for more affordable gaming devices, especially now that the Steam Deck LCD is discontinued and memory, storage and GPU prices have skyrocketed. While the PlayStation 5 is indeed growing long in the tooth in some ways, it still proves very performant in others.

But is the solution necessarily as clear-cut as Shawn Layden makes it sound? Probably not, but it's important to remember where his argument is coming from, as the former CEO of PlayStation. Part of his argument hinges around the idea that to most consumers, "more raytracing and more teraflops" are differences they don't necessarily even understand.

If you're up-to-date with cutting-edge graphics technology, that comment will sound extreme. But put another way: did you notice how Fortnite still looks mostly the same even after it got an Unreal Engine 5 ray tracing makeover? The effects are certainly better, but the game's aesthetic is largely unchanged.

Another point made by Layden in the original podcast (embedded above,) is that consoles are becoming unusually more rather than less expensive over time. A cheap late-cycle refresh for the PlayStation 5, especially if it features reduced internal storage with a disc drive instead of a pricey 1TB NVMe SSD, would address a genuine pain point in console gaming right now.

PC gamers typically find it difficult to recommend a console over the best PC you can manage to put together at the same price point. But console-only gamers exist, too, and it's becoming clear that if their needs won't be met by the current market, they'll happily stick to old consoles or explore new platforms with devices like cheap Android emulation handhelds.

Personally, I don't think the gaming industry can move forward without leading consoles making generational leaps with each device cycle. But that doesn't mean Sony should plan to leave its existing PlayStation 5 playerbase in the lurch.

Another potential X factor is the rumored PlayStation 6 handheld. If it could be price-competitive with the Nintendo Switch 2 and allow for a low-spec entry into the PlayStation 6 library, it could address growing concerns of next-gen's entry fee meeting or exceeding $1000 USD.