PlayStation Neo won’t shorten PS4 lifecycle, says Sony

PlayStation 4’s lifecycle won’t be cut short as a result of the new high-end PlayStation Neo, Sony’s head of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida has said.

“PS4 is PS4,” Yoshida said, when asked by German website Gameswelt.TV whether the new console would shorten the traditional 5-6 year cycle. “[The] new high-end PS4 is still PS4, so the lifecycle is not going to be shorter.”

PS4 launched alongside Xbox One in late 2013, with rumours pointing to a release later this year for the new high-end PlayStation Neo. Yoshida refused to provide any new details on the console, however, instead saying that the platform holder will talk about it “when we have enough information on preparation”.

Sony confirmed that it was working on a new “high-end” PS4, codenamed PlayStation 4 Neo, ahead of its E3 press conference earlier this month. The console was not shown at E3, however, despite rumours suggesting that it is due to launch relatively soon.

Microsoft, meanwhile, announced the first official details on its next Xbox console Project Scorpio, confirming that it will feature a 6 teraflop GPU and will launch in late 2017. The announcement took Yoshida by surprise, however.

“I was surprised [Microsoft announced Scorpio],” Yoshida said earlier in the interview. “I was not expecting them to talk about [it]. It’s very very super interesting what they are doing.”

Yoshida’s comments echo those of Sony Interactive president Andrew House, who said last week that he was “surprised by the step of announcing something over a year ahead of time”.

“The dynamics of the tech industry are such that there’s a much heavier emphasis on immediate gratification than there was,” he said. “A lot of that is to do with how Apple has very cleverly and elegantly managed the ‘available now’ approach. So yes, that was a slight surprise to me.”

A release window for PlayStation Neo has yet to be announced.

Source: gameswelt.tv