Given that the PlayStation 3 and 4 followed similar paths, Sony’s plans for the PlayStation 6 seem logical.
According to renowned AMD insider Kepler_L2, who revealed the information on the NeoGAF forum, Sony plans to launch the PlayStation 6 in 2027, though unexpected delays could still occur. This would coincide with a seven-year life cycle, just like its predecessors, the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3. The main difference is with the PlayStation 5 Pro, which is expected to be released four years after the PlayStation 5 and thus only three years before the PlayStation 6. In contrast, the PlayStation 4 Pro was released three years after the PlayStation 4 and four years before the PlayStation 5.
Rumors about the PlayStation 6’s specifications have been circulating for a while, mainly thanks to Moore’s Law Is Dead, who leaked that it would have an estimated 34–40 TFLOPS of computing power. This would mean a 6–12x increase in ray tracing performance compared to the PlayStation 5. AMD and Sony recently released new details about their ongoing Project Amethyst collaboration, which aims to develop hardware and software for future GPUs and consoles. Currently, three technologies have been highlighted: Radiance Core, Neural Array, and Universal Compression.
The first was designed specifically to deliver the rumored RT performance boost. The Radiance Core hardware blocks accelerate the computationally intensive calculations of the ray tracing pass, enabling the shader cores to work on the rest of the rendered scene. The Neural Array is a dedicated AI acceleration unit integrated into the GPU architecture. It is designed to handle machine learning inference tasks natively on the console hardware, achieving much greater efficiency than current methods. Universal Compression is a new compression technology that is device-agnostic and reduces the amount of data in textures, geometry, and other game assets without significantly compromising quality. It optimizes memory bandwidth and storage, enabling games to load faster and run more efficiently. This is reflected in improved streaming performance, which reduces stuttering during gameplay.
Mark Cerny, PlayStation’s system architect, revealed that these technologies will be featured in the next console, the PlayStation 6, in a few years. It seems that we have only started receiving “next-gen” games in the last couple of years, whereas most titles were cross-gen previously. Nevertheless, this generation still has a few aces up its sleeve. These could include The Witcher IV and The Elder Scrolls VI.
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