When the PlayStation 5 launched in 2020, I was genuinely excited. Maybe it was because it felt like Sony was trying to do something unique in the space with its controller and design. Perhaps it was because the Xbox being released along side it felt more like an iterative upgrade to the One X I already owned, and the PS5 would be a large jump from the launch PS4 I was still playing Final Fantasy 7 Remake on. Regardless I bided my time and went through many online checkouts before I received my PS5 sometime around March 2021. I loved my PS5 at the time. Even when I bought a Series X I still preferred the premium feel and design of the PS5, especially its brilliantly designed new controller. However, take that new UI away and the PS5 is just a nice remix of the PS4.

The thing that’s different about this generation compared to previous ones is that they’re still making PS4 games. The PS5 Pro already came out, it’s 4 years since the original PS5 launched, and most games still also come out on the PS4 as well. Most indie games release on it, all sports games release on it, and even Call of Duty still releases on it! By this point in the PS3’s lifecycle it received its last CoD game, Black Ops 3, which released without a campaign mode on the platform. This was two years after the PS4 released. A leaker back in 2023 released documents showing Sony’s internal numbers, and the results shocked a lot of the gaming world. While it appeared that the PS5 MAU was growing month over month, 75% of PSN’s MAU was logging in from a PS4. This obviously was going to grow over time as the PS5’s supply issues alleviated, and it did, but Sony confirmed earlier this year that half of PSN users are on PS4. So why is this happening now, when it never has in the past?

First off, for the casual audience that plays those major games (Call of Duty, sports games, F2P shooters / mega malls like Fortnite / Roblox / Genshin) isn’t the type to really care about visuals to an extent of spending all that money on a new console immediately. The games still work, and they’re still spending money on them. Importantly, this is the reason all these major developers will keep supporting the platform, so it’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Second, is the architecture has remained the same between generations. The PS4/5 / Xboxes all use relatively standard AMD x86 CPU’s and GPUs, and share more in common with their gaming PC counterparts than their predecessors. This makes it much easier to target software across multiple generations than it ever was. This combined with proliferation of off the shelf engines in the industry such as Unreal and Unity takes a lot of the work out of targeting different systems.

The third thing is diminishing returns. I bought a PS5 Pro at launch because my PS5 is my favorite place to play games, and I wanted a thing that ran FF7 Rebirth a bit better. It arrived in the mail, I turned it on, and it sure just does that. As a recovered PC gamer, I have never had a console feel more like just a GPU upgrade than this thing. At the end of the day that’s what I wanted from it and I am happy with the money I spent, but I can’t recommend this system to the majority of people. However it catalyzed a thought, that the PS5 Pro is the PlayStation 6. This is what consoles will just become.

The Xbox One / One X / Series S / Series X are sort of the same exact box. They’re different in various ways, the original One launched in 2013 feels slower to navigate these days, and they output different resolutions / frame rates, but they are all the same box. They run the same operating system software (minus quick resume / dynamic backgrounds on the old boxes). They run the same games and use the same cross save system. I can play a game on my Series X, go to a Series S, then a One X, then a One, and the save will transfer between all 4 seamlessly with zero issues. They all support cloud streaming the games. This made getting a Series X feel like upgrading a PC or getting a new iPhone in the mail than moving to a new “generation” of consoles.

For a while I used this as a negative against the new Xbox, but in hindsight I used this to ignore the many puzzling decisions Sony made this generation. For one, PS5 games only work with dualsense controllers. There is no smart delivery / cross sync between PS4 / PS5 saves besides what developers manually implement. It seems like Sony has gone out of their way to make the experience of owning both systems worse in order to make the PS5 feel more different than it actually is given the diminishing returns of the hardware. They’re clinging onto this idea of a “generation” which no longer fundamentally exists as a marketing gimmick, and for the most part consumers understand this. It’s why there’s more people playing on a base PS4 right now in 2024 than own an Xbox period.

So what do I mean by “The PlayStation 6 does not exist”? Obviously Sony is going to release a box called the “PlayStation 6”, because they’d be dumb not to. What I mean is that the idea of a “PlayStation 6” is a fantasy. The next PlayStation might look very different physically than a PS5, it might have a completely different interface and revamped controller, but in reality it will just be a remixed PS5 Pro, and consumers know this. The idea that the PS5 Pro will be obsoleted once the PS6 launches is also a fantasy. The PS5 will probably continue to receive a majority of games released well into the mid to late 2030’s. What I mean by this, is this idea of a console generation is dead, regardless of whether Sony wants to admit it. Future game consoles will be bought and upgraded the same way all consumer technology is, incrementally every year or two. Developers will target all these boxes simultaneously, because they already are.

Even without PC / Switch, most games still release for the PS5 / PS4 / PS4 Pro / Xbox One / Xbox One X / Xbox Series S / Xbox Series X, and thats excluding the PS5 Pro. You buy the box when you want to upgrade, and when you open it your games will just run a little better depending on how long you waited. That’s it. Just like a phone, just like a computer. Eventually after 12 or so years you might stop seeing games for your old box, just like your old phone loses support or your gaming PC can’t play new games without a GPU upgrade. The “generation cycle” though? That’s just over.