PS5 Will Release Early 2019 (Opinion)

[Alby_da_Wolf]

gcwy said:

Not a chance. You're not going to see next-gen consoles until at least 2020. They'll do the same strategy that they've been doing for their consoles. PS event where PS5 gets revealed in Feb 2020, game/system showcase at E3 and finally release in late 2020.

The reasons for that, even excluding how well PS4 is doing right now, are mostly down to hardware. They simply cannot make a system during that time that will not only provide a significant jump over the PS4 (in terms of everything i.e RAM, storage, GPU, CPU etc) without charging premium price for it, and absolutely nothing suggests that Sony will be taking that route since it's done them so well this generation. As for MS, I hope they take the Sony route in terms of pricing, obviously the Xbox One X is an exception and the original Xbox One was priced higher than competition because of their focus on multimedia and inclusion of Kinect. Hopefully their next base console will be a competent one.

AMD just had their CPU roadmap leaked a few days ago and it mostly confirmed everyone's suspicions, Zen APUs starting in early 2018, one revision of the same architecture somewhere around 2019 and Zen 2 APUs in late 2019/2020. The longer they wait the better, especially since the mid-gen refreshes mitigated the long console gens that everyone hates, now they can relax and think their strategy through.

Definitely agree, not to mention that AMD must rely on third party foundries for production (and it had to fight with Intel in tribunals to be allowed to completely end internal production, become financially unsustainable, and start totally outsourcing, as Intel, through some one-sided parts of their cross-licensing deals, wanted to prevent the outsourcing of x86 CPUs production) while cryptocurrency mining is keeping GPU and memory prices high, so it's both more likely a delay than an acceleration in the CPU and APU roadmap and unlikely an early drop in GPU and memory prices. APUs like those used in base model consoles are maybe in a better situation, particularly if they are customised models made on console makers specifications, as their production and prices are established on deals between AMD and console makers and not directly subject to end-user market volatility, that anyway still indirectly influences them, particularly if and when, after the initial deals, the console maker needs a larger production increase than initially agreed. The later they start producing PS5, the more likely production will have caught up with miners demand, possibly with mining-taylored cards with their own market, ending the current GPU price turmoil.