PlayStation 5 Release Date News: New Console Could Launch in 2021, Analyst Says

By Edward Leano, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, January 09, 2018

Judging from the way that Sony launched the PlayStation 4 Pro, and Microsoft's own Xbox One X after that, a research analyst drew the conclusion that Sony is now looking to beat its main home console rival to the punch.

The main reason for that, according to IDC research analyst Lewis Ward, is that Sony has brought out the PlayStation 4 Pro as a marketing stopgap to anticipate Microsoft's upgrade, which eventually resulted to the Xbox One X.

It's a "marketing gimmick" to squeeze a bit of performance on the current platform, as Ward explained to GamingBolt on Saturday, Jan. 6.

Earlier in December, Ward predicted that the next generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles will once again be going head to head in about three years from now.

Back to the topic of the PlayStation 4 Pro, Ward does not see the upside of the newest current Sony console compared to the upcoming PlayStation 5.

"Right now I think PS5 and the next-gen Xbox will arrive in 2021, but that's really just a tentative placeholder in my forecast," the analyst said, as quoted by the Daily Star. That sounds similar to what most industry experts think it would be, with forecasts ranging from as early as 2019 to 2021.

"It's nothing like Xbox One X in terms of the performance lift. It's basically a standard console refresh, but Sony tweaked a few internals and got a 10% performance boost for the Pro," the IDC researcher explained to the magazine.

Even then, the Xbox One X is not the primary rival of the upcoming PlayStation 5. Even with its lofty goal of true 4K gaming achieved, Microsoft's newest and most powerful home console is still not the next console generation, according to Ward.

"Xbox One X is a 8.5 gen console," Ward noted, adding that the PlayStation 4 Pro is not anywhere near the halfway mark to the next gen.