PlayStation 6 May Be Delayed Until 2028 or Even 2029 — Embracer Group
If you were counting on a PlayStation 6 in 2027, it might be time to adjust your expectations. Embracer Group’s June 2026 annual report — published by one of the largest game publishers in the world — states that industry analysts now believe Sony is actively considering pushing the PS6 launch from 2027 to 2028 or even 2029. The reason: an AI-driven global memory shortage that is making the hardware increasingly expensive to build and sell at a competitive price.
The report isn’t based on direct insider knowledge from Sony — Embracer is transparent about that, attributing the claim to unnamed external analysts. But the finding doesn’t exist in a vacuum: it aligns with a Bloomberg report from February 2026 that raised the same possibility, and with public statements from Sony’s own CEO that the company has not yet decided when or at what price it will launch the console.
What Embracer’s Report Actually Says
Embracer Group — the Swedish holding company behind studios including THQ Nordic, Crystal Dynamics, and Saber Interactive — publishes annual financial reports that include broad assessments of the gaming market. The PS6 comment appears on page 17, in a section discussing the global console games market.
The relevant passage reads:
“There are some challenges around the volatility of tariffs in the US as well as an impact from the global increase in RAM prices driven by AI. Both factors could potentially have a negative impact on console retail prices, which would, in turn, hamper market growth. In the longer term, higher RAM costs could also cause operational delays to the launch of future consoles. In fact, some analysts believe that Sony is now considering pushing back the debut of its next PlayStation console from 2027 to 2028 or even 2029.”
As GamesRadar notes, Embracer does not name those analysts — raising the possibility that they may simply be citing the same Bloomberg sources who reported the delay scenario back in February. Still, even as secondary sourcing, this is a significant publisher with deep industry ties flagging the delay in a formal investor document, and that carries weight regardless of the exact origin.
Sony’s Own CEO Won’t Commit to a Date
Embracer’s caution is well-founded because Sony itself has been conspicuously non-committal. On May 8, 2026, during Sony’s Q4 FY2025 earnings briefing, President and CEO Hiroki Totoki addressed PS6 directly — and the answer was unusually candid for a hardware launch that many assumed was imminent.
“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. Looking at the current circumstances, memory prices are also expected to be very high for FY2027, because there will still be a shortage of supply. So under that assumption, we will like to think carefully about what we will do — how can we reduce the other costs of the hardware other than the semiconductor? And also, we might think of new ways of selling the product.”
That final phrase — “new ways of selling the product” — has generated considerable discussion. Sony isn’t confirming what it means, but the implication is that the company may be exploring alternatives to the standard one-time hardware purchase: subscription-based access, tiered hardware models, financing options, or other pricing structures that could offset a console that might otherwise retail at a price point that chills adoption.
Memory prices are already driving tangible hardware cost increases right now. Sony raised PS5 prices in March 2026. Nintendo increased Switch 2 prices in response to the same supply pressures. Both are downstream effects of the same crisis.
The Root Cause: AI Is Eating the Memory Supply
The core problem is structural, not cyclical. The global boom in artificial intelligence — data centers, large language models, inference hardware — has created unprecedented demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and GDDR chips. Production capacity is being reoriented toward AI infrastructure, leaving consumer electronics — including gaming consoles — competing for a constrained supply of components at elevated prices.
This is compounded by US tariff volatility. The uncertainty around import costs for semiconductors manufactured in Asia makes it difficult for Sony to lock in component pricing far enough in advance to build confident launch projections.
The result: a console that, by all accounts, is technically ready — or nearly so — may be commercially unlaunchable at a price that would drive mainstream adoption. As eTeknix puts it, a PS6 released into the current memory market would almost certainly carry a retail price that “could slow the growth of the gaming market and discourage a significant portion of potential buyers.”
Sony’s fiscal reports confirm that even PS5 adoption has been affected: the company acknowledged that PS5 uptake fell in Q4 2025 — in part a consequence of price increases on hardware that consumers are increasingly reluctant to absorb.
What We Know About the Hardware Itself
Technical details on the PS6 have been filtering out for months through hardware leakers and industry insiders, and the picture they paint is of a genuinely ambitious piece of kit — if Sony can get it to market at a viable price.
Based on reporting from leaker Kepler_L2 and tech channel Moore’s Law Is Dead, the current leading spec estimates for PS6 include:
- CPU: Custom AMD Zen 6 cores, codenamed “Orion”
- GPU: RDNA 5 architecture — estimated 34–40 TFLOPS of rasterization performance, with up to 6–12x ray tracing improvement over PS5
- RAM: Reportedly between 24 GB and 30 GB of GDDR7 — with the lower figure reflecting possible cost-cutting in response to memory prices
- Storage: 1TB SSD baseline, with significantly higher bandwidth than PS5
- AI upscaling: Enhanced PSSR 2.0, with dedicated neural array hardware
- Fabrication: TSMC 3nm process node; chip fabrication reportedly began January 2026
That last point matters for the timeline debate. Historically, Sony has followed roughly a two-year cadence from first silicon to retail launch — which would place a holiday 2027 release within reach. But that cadence assumes component availability and cost at levels that the current market simply doesn’t support.
Memory configuration remains the biggest open variable. The difference between 30 GB and 24 GB of GDDR7 is not a performance footnote — it directly affects what the console costs to manufacture, which in turn drives the retail price conversation.
Is 2027 Still Possible?
Not ruled out — but increasingly uncertain. Twisted Voxel points out that Embracer and the analysts it cites stop short of saying the PS6 has already been delayed internally. “It’s too soon to count 2027 out,” GamesRadar cautions. At least one hardware leaker has maintained as recently as March 2026 that a 2027 release remains the target despite the noise.
What’s changed is the confidence level. Six months ago, 2027 was assumed. Now it’s contested. The Bloomberg report, the Totoki earnings comments, the PS5 price increases, and now Embracer’s formal flagging of the issue in an investor document all point in the same direction: Sony is navigating a genuinely difficult set of external conditions, and the PS6 launch window is a live decision rather than a settled one.
For PS5 owners, a delay — if it materialises — is not entirely bad news. A longer active generation means more supported games, more time to amortise the current hardware cost, and a longer runway for the current library. The PS5 Pro arrived in late 2024; a mid-gen upgrade that was just two years old at the start of a new console generation would be an awkward proposition for players who invested in it.
Quick Summary
| Detail | Status |
|---|---|
| Source of delay report | Embracer Group Annual Report, June 2026 (citing unnamed analysts) |
| Previous expected window | Late 2027 |
| Revised window (per analysts) | 2028 or 2029 |
| Root cause | AI-driven global RAM shortage + US tariff volatility |
| Sony’s official position | ❓ “Not yet decided” — Hiroki Totoki, May 8, 2026 |
| Bloomberg alignment | ✅ February 2026 report raised same 2028–29 window |
| Is 2027 ruled out? | ❌ No — but confidence has fallen significantly |
| Leaked specs | AMD Zen 6 / RDNA 5, 24–30 GB GDDR7, TSMC 3nm |
Sony has not commented on Embracer’s report. Until the company officially announces a release window, everything here remains projection and inference — but it’s projection coming from multiple independent and credible directions simultaneously.
Sources: Embracer Group Annual Report 2025/26 · GamesRadar · Twisted Voxel · eTeknix · This Week in Video Games (Totoki quotes) · NotebookCheck · GamerMarkt (PS6 specs) · ResetEra
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