The best thing the PS6 can do is be less powerful than PS5 – Reader’s Feature

A reader argues that rising costs in the games industry means Sony would be wise to make the PS6 less powerful than current gen consoles.

In two years’ time we’re going to be drowning in news, rumours and leaks about the PlayStation 6. Everything seems to point towards it coming out in 2027 and I have not met a single person that’s excited about it. Everybody thinks it’s too soon, everyone thinks the PlayStation 5 has barely started, and everyone thinks Sony has dropped the ball in terms of games.

Or maybe everyone doesn’t think that. Maybe I’m just living in a bubble with my video game savvy friends, but it doesn’t matter because dread it, run from it, the PlayStation 6 will arrive all the same.

We haven’t got any details yet, that I’m aware of, but the few hints we’ve had are of a new console (and a portable) that is even more powerful than the last one and no doubt even more expensive. Considering the PS5 Pro is already the most expensive console I don’t even want to think about how much the PlayStation 6 is going to cost.

As we all know by now, more powerful means it’ll take even longer to make games and need more money and people. This will mean less games, less often, and absolutely no risks of any kind – including probably any new IP at all. We’ve already seen this in this generation, where everything’s slowed to a crawl, but a new console is only going to make things worse.

What makes the whole situation all the sadder is that there is no way on Earth the extra power is going to make any difference. There’s barely any difference between PlayStation 4 and 5 games as it is, so the difference between 5 and 6 is going to be miniscule and certainly nothing a normal person will ever notice.

Remember that PlayStation 5 tech demo that looked a bit like Tomb Raider? We haven’t seen anything like that so far in an actual game, so that was all just a lie. They always are, I know, but whatever excuse they try to give for the PlayStation 6 needing to exist is going to be a con.

Considering everything going on in gaming at the moment the only decision that makes any sense to me is making the PlayStation 6 less powerful than the PlayStation 5. If that sounds silly to you, I guarantee the vast majority of people wouldn’t even notice. If you told them it was more powerful (which I’m not suggesting Sony do) they’d probably believe it, just because nothing in terms of graphics has looked any different in years.

Sony should explain that in order for the portable and console machines to be running the same games they had to lower the overall power, since a portable can never be as powerful as a home console.

There are better reasons to decrease the power though and not just because it’ll make the console cheaper. We’ve known about the problem that games cost too much to make for years now and nobody has done a thing about it. Not Sony and not anyone else.
If the PlayStation 6 is more powerful – if it is just another box under the TV- then the problem is only going to continue to get worse until something snaps and suddenly video games just aren’t viable anymore.

I don’t want to see a future where the only video games are indies, mobile games, and free to play, but that is where we’re headed, and very quickly. The future should be AA games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Eriksholm: The Stolen Dream (which I haven’t played yet but was fascinated to hear about this week).

But none of the big publishers care about that, they think it’s small beans and not worth bothering with. If they carry on their current course, games will end up costing £100+ (there’s already rumours of that for GTA 6), they’ll take 10 years to make, and they’ll only be the safest of safe franchises and ideas.

It’s not just publishers I worry aren’t doing anything about this ticking time bomb, it’s gamers who just hope the problem is going to magically go away. If games become unprofitable publishers will simply stop making them. They won’t start making cheaper games because then their graphs won’t go up, they’ll just find something else to make money from.

Something has to change. It’s not enough even to draw the line here, they have to go back to before the PlayStation 5, when companies could still afford to make games and we could still afford to pay for them.

By reader Captone

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