Hiroki Totoki, the head of Sony Corporation, has reiterated that the company has not yet decided on either the price or the release date for the PlayStation 6 gaming console. The executive had already mentioned this earlier, and the situation has not changed since then, despite numerous rumors and leaks online. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Totoki explained the reasons for the ongoing uncertainty. The main factors were the global shortage of memory on the world market, an unstable trading environment, and a noticeable weakening of the Japanese yen. According to the head of Sony, the company needs to take certain actions, otherwise it will not be able to survive in the current economic conditions.

Back in April, a well‑known insider claimed that Sony would not postpone the console release beyond 2027, since AMD has already begun validating the hardware, and it would be unprofitable to waste resources. However, since then, memory prices have risen noticeably, and the main driver of the price increase has been the unprecedented boom in infrastructure for artificial intelligence. Other market segments have already felt the consequences of this. Solid‑state drives have seen the biggest price hikes, and in the near future, analysts expect prices for motherboards to rise as well. Console manufacturers depend on the same suppliers of RAM and flash memory modules as large data centers, since the colossal volumes of purchases by AI companies are consuming all available production capacity.

At the same time, Sony representatives assured that the current stockpiles of memory will be sufficient until the end of the year. This alleviates concerns about a possible shortage of PlayStation 5 consoles ahead of the long‑awaited release of Grand Theft Auto 6 in November. However, these guarantees apply exclusively to the current generation of devices. It remains unknown what specific steps Sony’s management will take to ensure the production of PlayStation 6. Given the current market conditions, postponing the launch of the new‑generation console until 2028 or even later seems like a вполне realistic scenario.