PlayStation 5 probably won’t be coming out until 2020, at least if you agree with Michael Pachter. But there are rumors it could come out next year, or even late in 2018.
However unlikely that might be, there is some hope that PS5 may be here sooner than later. According to a report from the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the company is presently busy speeding up production of a new gaming-related chip.
Of course, there is no proof that this gaming chip is actually related to the PS5—but there is further reason to believe that it might be. Basically, we also have heard rumors that an AMD graphics processor and an AMD CPU will be used in the PS5, which makes sense given the architecture of the PS4. That means that the PS5 would require 7nm chips—and those are the exact ships which the Taiwan company is now manufacturing in earnest.
Speaking on the company’s current production activities during a financial conference call, TSMC’s president stated, “More than 50 products tape-outs has been planned by end of this year from applications across mobile, server CPU, network processor, gaming, GPU, PGA, cryptocurrency, automotive and AI. Our 7nm is already in volume production.”
Note that gaming is one of the key applications which the president mentioned during the call. That could allude to PS5.
We’ve also heard lately that there are dev kits being widely distributed for PS5. This too is unsubstantiated at this point, but it is consistent with this latest rumor, and both point toward the release of the next gen console not being too far away.
Will it happen during 2018 though? Probably not. For one thing, the AMD Navi GPU which it is believed will be used in the PS5 is not even shipping out until sometime later in 2018. For another, there are a number of PS4 exclusives still on the way. So even though PS4’s units shipping out are starting to decline and we’re moving toward the trailing end of the cycle, this console still has quite a bit of life left in it, and Sony will be looking to capitalize on that.