He said that, along with looking at what kinds of live-service games it can release by working with first-party and third-party studios, PlayStation has also been looking into what it can do with some of the older live-service titles under its banner, like Helldivers 2. As for new releases, Nishino is excited about the upcoming release of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls on August 6th.

“We believe that live service games are content that attracts users on a global level, so we want to continue to revitalize the market through both first-party and third-party content,” said Nishino. “We are not only focusing on promoting new releases, but also considering what we can do with older titles in the medium to long term. Also, this year we are planning to release our own live service title, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and we hope everyone will enjoy it.”

When it comes to whether PlayStation has any plans to slow down or reconsider its live-service efforts, Nishino said that the company finds it “important to continuously provide something.”

“The genre itself is relatively new, and I think many people are trying various things, so we also want to continue to take on challenges within that context.”

Nishino also provided some more clarity on PlayStation’s plans for multi-platform releases for its first-party games. He said that the decision of whether or not a release should be exclusive to PS5 largely comes down to a few characteristics, like how many players need to be in the game for it to be considered a success. With this in mind, single-player games will largely be exclusive to PlayStation consoles, while multiplayer games, which need larger audiences, will come to PC as well.

“Originally, platform selection is determined based on the characteristics of each title,” explained Nishino. “If releasing on PC can maximize the gaming experience of a title, we will continue to consider it. Our main policy at the moment is that for single-player games developed as a first party, we will further refine the value of the gaming experience that we can provide on PlayStation, while for live service games, we believe it is also important to have more people play through online multiplayer, so we are considering PS5 and PC as the basic platforms for release.”

Discussing the future of PlayStation, Nishino explained that the company wants to “develop new game console experiences” by making use of new technologies that can “be used in various forms”. Interestingly, he also vaguely hinted at the possibility of the rumored handheld PS6 being in the works.

“PlayStation is strongly associated with playing on a living room TV, but we plan to release monitors and speakers so that it can be played comfortably in other locations as well,” he said. “The PlayStation Portal was developed as part of this effort. We want to continue thinking and challenging ourselves to provide game experiences that suit increasingly diverse lifestyles.”

When taking individual companies into account, Sony’s consoles have seen a steep rise in price to an average of $672. This marks a 33 percent increase from last year. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X/S, on the other hand, has seen prices go up by 22 percent, to $524.

Curiously, while Xbox unit sales have been going down by 12 percent, spending on Xbox hardware has seemingly gone up when compared to last year. PlayStation, unfortunately, doesn’t have the same benefits, with spending having dropped by 43 percent when compared to May 2025, coupled with a 58 percent drop in console unit sales.

“Xbox is currently tracking a distant third in hardware sales among the major manufacturers. But they are getting more revenue from each unit sold, enough to make dollar sales grow in May despite the unit drop,” said Circana’s Mat Piscatella. “If that fits the definition of ‘working’ or not, I don’t know.”

Nintendo, on the other hand, has continued to see growth in console sales, with 5.9 million units of the Switch 2 having been sold in the US in the console’s first year. This has also made it the second-fastest-selling gaming hardware in the country, right behind the Game Boy Advance, which had sold 6.5 million units in its first year. With a price hike looming over the horizon for the Nintendo Switch 2, however, Piscatella has noted that the coming year “may be a tough one” for the console in terms of hardware sales.

As for software sales, IO Interactive’s 007 First Light has topped the sales charts in the US, followed by Forza Horizon 6 in second place and LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight in third. Fourth place has been taken up by the Early Access release of Subnautica 2. The only other new game in the top-10 chart is Yoshi and the Mystery Book, which debuted at 8th place. The rest of the chart is taken up by games released earlier in the year, like Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream at 5th, MLB: The Show 26 at 6th, Crimson Desert at 7th, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at 9th, and Mario Kart World at 10th.

Piscatella noted that there weren’t really any anomalies in software sales for the month of May 2026 in the US, while also mentioning that half of the titles in the list were new releases. It is worth noting that three of the top 10 best-sellers in the US were exclusive to Nintendo platforms.

Hardware – The average price paid for a new unit of video game hardware reached $502 in May, up 14% compared to a year ago ($440). May 2026 PlayStation 5 average pricing increased by 33% versus a year ago to $672, with Xbox Series up 22%, to $524.

— Mat Piscatella (@matpiscatella.bsky.social) 2026-06-26T13:00:03.582Z

While KeplerL2 didn’t reveal any further details about why they disagreed with the idea of a delay, they “liked” another post by forum user Bojji, who noted that Sony would have a lot more to lose through such a delay than it would gain. Bojji pointed out that the company has already penned deals with chip maker TSMC to fabricate the hardware powering the PS6. Along with this, Sony also likely doesn’t have any assurances of memory getting cheaper in the future.

“Delaying the console when it’s basically done doesn’t make any sense; they have TSMC contracts for production of APUs, maybe even GDDR7 contracts with memory makers, R&D done that cost them a few hundred millions,” wrote Bojji. “PS5 sales are slowing down, and there is NO guarantee that memory prices will drop between now and 2030.”

“Releasing it in 2027 – several million units sold before 2030, when memory price drops you just lower price of the console and gain massive market share (on top of what you already sold). Releasing it in 2030 – no sales… in 2030 memory prices could be lower, the same, or higher. You start from scratch.”

KeplerL2 had previously discussed the idea of a potential delay beyond 2027 not happening, noting that AMD had already started testing and validating the chips it was making for the PS6. “You think AMD is going to waste resources doing validation on something they think will get delayed?”

The discussion eventually led to the subject of how Sony had already dealt with launching new console hardware during challenging times for the industry with the launch of the PS5. The console was released into the market during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the gaming industry saw incredible growth at the time since people were stuck at home due to lockdowns, hardware saw plenty of issues, with supply chains all over the world being in danger of falling apart.

In the meantime, recent analysis of the rumored hardware powering the PS6 and Microsoft’s Project Helix have indicated that, rather than fighting over image quality, both next-gen consoles will instead try to battle it out over which has the better frame rates. The analysis noted that while Project Helix will have more powerful hardware, it won’t be much more powerful than what we get in the PS6. “And so, for me, that sounds like one of them is meant for 4K 144 [FPS], and one of them is made for 4K 60,” said Moore’s Law is Dead earlier this month.

For more on what we can expect from Sony and Microsoft from their next-generation consoles, take a look at the reported performance differences.

Okay, gross over-simplication aside, here’s the bottom line: stronger tools have enabled loftier ambition, and that ambition has spiralled. Longer development cycles and skyrocketing budgets means the reality is fewer releases per studio. What’s more, expectation has grown in tandem with studio ambition. Publishers want bigger worlds, deeper mechanics, and sharper fidelity to match improvements in game development infrastructure, while players want value for money.

Neither can sustain the other indefinitely. What we have is a game development paradox, where slower timelines drive anticipation, and vice versa.

It wasn’t always like this. While the PS2-GameCube-Xbox generation of the early 2000s is remembered as a golden age for game development, where newfound complexity met creative freedom, it’d be remiss to class this era as easier. Shorter, linear experiences were common, with fewer systemic elements layering atop one another, but these were symptoms of weaker hardware. Ambition was contained behind limitations; fully-realised, but always with trade-offs.

In many ways, the spiral started here. As development tech grew in power, the scope of expectation grew alongside, and ambition came along for the ride. Soon enough, games needed cinematic presentation, seamless worlds, systemic design, and more. The genie was out the bottle, and everything started taking longer to build.

The arrival of x86 come the PS4 and Xbox One, however, removed some hardware friction. Migrating to a PC-like architecture made games easier to develop as studios found themselves already familiar with how it operated. Meanwhile, pre-established toolsets brought efficiency gains, and unified codebases made cross-platform releases more achievable. Game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine eroded technical barriers further, as studios adopted a universal framework which needed minimal adaptation to function smoothly.

"The arrival of x86 come the PS4 and Xbox One, however, removed some hardware friction."

But, rising expectations still loomed large, from publishers who were requesting even bigger worlds, even sharper fidelity, with more features, more platforms, more content, post-release roadmaps, and so on. And then there’s all the tertiary requirements: community support, creator management, marketing, et cetera. We’re in a climate where expectation occupies many fronts.

The sheer volume of creation has led to one inevitability: bottlenecks. And if we zoom back into game development, comparing and contrasting the then and now, asset production, specifically, has grown exponentially more complex. See, a door used to be just a door. A flat texture, a simple animation, and maybe a loading trigger. Now it needs detail; material texture, lighting consistency, physical interaction, sound design, and more to behave correctly in every possible game state. Likewise, a tree was once a simple background dressing, as was a forest or distant mountain. Now it needs detailed geometry, wind simulation, and optimised draw distance across multiple vantage points. Multiply that across an entire biome, throw in emergent NPC behaviour or dynamic weather, and the scale of modern game development becomes clear. It’s not that the assets are harder to make, it’s that everything is now an asset, and they need to be of tangible high quality at that.

Yet, despite these bottlenecks in the production pipeline, countless AAA experiences – open world games, especially – seldom feel succinct. They’re bloated and long-winded, often trying to merge systems-driven, RPG-like mechanics with cinematic presentation. Now, we’re not steering toward a black and white argument here. It’s not: large open world equals bad. Remember, we’re assessing why so many games take an ice age to develop, so if two different production pipelines run at once – systemic and mechanical design alongside mocap-acted cinematography – then it’s bound to take a long time. Modern AAA development, quite often, isn’t just about making a game but making a movie and simulation simultaneously.

And look, even after all the assets are locked-in there’s still quality assurance to undertake. See, modern games don’t tend to ship on a single platform. They launch across consoles and PC hardware setups, with performance modes, accessibility options, store compliance, and more to account for. Every variable is like a moving target, where a fix in one area could break something in another. Viewing, again, through the lens of AAA design, with open worlds, branching quests, and emergent systems, then there are thousands of possible interactions which need to be tested. It isn’t just about squashing bugs; the bigger and more complex a world becomes, the harder it is to say conclusively that it works.

"Even after all the assets are locked-in there’s still quality assurance to undertake."

Of course, work of this scale demands enormous budgets. Even games with sales in the millions that we’d otherwise assume were successful can struggle to recoup costs. As a knock-on effect, publishers now think of their shiniest titles in the context of a wider ecosystem, encompassing endless engagement, DLC, subscription-based services, and even cross-media expansion. Take Remedy Entertainment, for instance, whose 2019 release Control had sold upwards of two million units by 2021, yet this wasn’t claimed as a hit by the Finnish outfit. Sales reached four-and-a-half million by 2024, but Remedy had already signed an agreement with Annapurna to fund the game’s sequel, Control Resonant, alongside adapting both Control and Alan Wake to TV and film. This strategic partnership isn’t necessarily about ensuring survival, but it does underline a big-budget game’s need to sustain beyond sales.

Mentioning Remedy is pertinent to this discussion too, as the studio often avoids the long cycles between releases that are hampering the industry elsewhere. Instead, they’ve found a way to move faster. And, they’re not alone either: Insomniac Games, Resident Evil and FromSoftware share the same knack for haste. Delving into why, we can see that they each emphasise the same underlying philosophies for constraint, reuse, and organisational structure.

In Remedy’s case, they control the scope of their experiences tightly, while proprietary game engine Northlight allows them to build multiple projects in parallel without reinventing its tools. Elsewhere, Insomniac Games use a ‘leapfrog’ pipeline with multiple dedicated teams working across overlapping projects, supported by asset reuse and first-party finances. Meanwhile, FromSoftware leans into iteration, reusing core mechanics, animations, and design frameworks while maintaining a flat creative structure which allows for faster decision making.

The unifying theme, however, is discipline. Each of these studios builds on what they’ve already accomplished, avoiding unnecessary sprawl to keep their creative focus narrow enough to develop quickly. In an industry chasing size and breadth, these three studios show that speed comes from knowing what to leave out.

"FromSoftware leans into iteration, reusing core mechanics, animations, and design frameworks while maintaining a flat creative structure which allows for faster decision making."

Of course, smaller, indie-focused teams avoid gargantuan gaps between releases too, despite using the same tools as their AAA counterparts. And, perhaps owing to more modest budgets and less investor pressure, the indie scene has blossomed into a hotbed of creativity and experimentation. They’re showing conclusively that it isn’t the development tools that are causing mass slowdown, but AAA’s tendency for colossal overreach.

Annual releases, like sports titles, ship quickly too, and interestingly they almost-always rely on trade-offs and constraints, like the trio of studios just-mentioned. Reused assets, recycled animations, and lightly refreshed mechanics ensure these titles hit their periodic release windows, but their iteration is seldom received positively.

If there’s demand for wholesale refresh without lengthy development cycles, then looking ahead, generative AI might unfortunately become more commonplace. It can accelerate asset creation while reducing costs, but it also raises difficult questions around ethics, authorship, and the role of developers themselves. Looking at generative AI from an art perspective, it has potential to hasten creative processes, but there’s widespread worry it’ll be deployed as an expression of creativity itself. If used morally, then faster production is possible.

Ultimately, games aren’t taking longer because developers have become less efficient. They’re taking longer because ambition, expectation, and cost has been spiralling. Development tools continue to improve, but that only pushes targets further away.

How I wish we were still stuck in the good old PS2 era. But then we wouldn’t have the insane graphics and production values that we all crave today, right?

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

As Totilo notes, last year’s annual report noted that PlayStation “aims to achieve sustainable and profitable business growth.” In its newer iteration, however, the line has been changed to: “aims to achieve sustainable business growth.” The fact that mentions of profitability got removed indicates the current spike in component prices will also start affecting PlayStation more adversely.

“In hardware, although Sony expects to be affected by the impact of increased prices and supply shortages of memory semiconductors, it plans to manage the impact on profitability by flexibly adjusting plans for, among other things, unit sales and promotions.”

In the meantime, the company wants to raise its service-based revenue from PlayStation Plus, likely in the hopes of compensating for the slimmer margins it is getting on PlayStation hardware.

As for bringing its games to more platforms, the company has said in its report last year that it “plans to continue its efforts to deploy its first-party titles to multiple platforms such as PC.” This line has been removed altogether in the newer report, which falls in line with recent rumors indicating that Sony just hasn’t been seeing the profit and growth from the PC market that it has been hoping for.

More recently, PlayStation CEO Hideaki Nishino essentially confirmed that the company won’t bring more of its single-player first-party games to PC. He said that release plans come down to the “characteristics of each title,” and that live-service games with online aspects will continue to be considered for a PC release to ensure a wider audience. Single-player first-party games, however, will stay on PlayStation hardware moving forward.

“Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximizes each title’s unique features,” he said.

As for other noteworthy parts of Sony’s new annual report, the company also plans to make use of more AI-based tools for game development. “Sony is utilizing AI to unleash the creativity of studios and further enhance the PlayStation experience,” reads a new addition to the report.

“Within the studio business, Sony aims to improve productivity through the use of AI-powered tools, allowing development teams to reinvest their time into building richer worlds and gameplay experiences. In the platform business, Sony is working to leverage AI to route transactions more efficiently, and to personalize and recommend content for individual users in the PlayStation Store. Sony also aims to push visual fidelity forward and deliver higher quality gameplay experiences through continued investments in AI and machine learning.”

Sony also wants to continue expanding its cross-media efforts by working to “create films and television shows based on PlayStation game IP in order to further expand the reach and monetization of its IP.”

While he was emphatic about making decisions based on the “characteristics of each title”, the rest of his statement points to single-player titles developed in-house by Sony’s first-party studios staying on PlayStation, while live-service titles, which come with an online component, could be considered for a PC release to reach as wide an audience as possible.

“Regardless of the platform, we will make decisions based on the principle of delivering the best possible gaming experience that maximizes each title’s unique features.”

Jason Schreier has weighed in, highlighting information from his sources that single-player narrative games are going to be exclusive to PlayStation. It’s not really a surprise, considering how Xbox is also doubling down on platform exclusivity for titles like Clockwork Revolution and Gears of War: E-Day.

Well, folks, it looks like the console wars are back on, and the next few years are going to be quite interesting as two of gaming’s giants try to get ahead of each other yet again.

The patent describes accomplishing this through the use of magnetoviscoelastic elastomer in the construction of the buttons. Fluid-filled membranes are also being explored to accomplish a similar effect.

Throughout the patent filing, Sony describes many potential applications of these kinds of buttons. One example provided was of a “finger grab” effect, where a button would get soft enough to let a player’s finger sink in before then hardening, “grabbing” the finger in place. In this example, the technology would mimic an in-game incident of the player being grabbed. More examples described giving players softer buttons while they explore a swamp, or harder buttons when climbing a mountain.

Interestingly, Sony has also noted potential accessibility-centric uses for the technology as well, with it being adapted for use for body parts other than fingers, like palms, elbows, or other external objects.

It is worth noting that, before analogue trigger buttons became the norm on consoles starting with the Nintendo GameCube, and then extending into the Xbox 360 and PS3 era, face buttons on controllers were often pressure-sensitive. In a game like Gran Turismo 4, for example, players could get finer control over their vehicle’s acceleration by controlling how hard they pressed the X key – the default button for acceleration.

Similarly, the original PS2 release of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater also made use of the analogue face buttons in its CQC. On softly pressing and holding down O, Snake could grab a wandering guard to interrogate them. Pushing down harder on the button would result in Snake slitting the guard’s throat.

In the meantime, Sony has been filing a variety of patents to explore future technology. For an example of more controller-centric patents, a filing from 2023 indicated that the company was exploring how the DualSense could be used to provide greater accessibility to players by employing machine learning to figure out how a player typically plays. The controller could then provide hints by dynamically lighting up what keys the should be pressed next to succeed at a given challenge.

The company has also been looking into the use of AI to assist players that are having a hard time with a game. A patent filing from back in January described the use of an AI-generated Ghost Player that could guide players through challenging parts of games. This system was also described as being quite customizable, giving players more fine-tuned options for how often such a Ghost Player would pop up, and how helpful it would be.

As is the case with any patent filing, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we will see these technologies hit the market. Companies often file patents as part of their typical R&D efforts to look into future technology. Short of Sony making an official announcement, we shouldn’t expect a DualSense controller with buttons that can soften or harden on demand to come out any time soon.

In a video analyzing the potential performance of the PS6 and Project Helix based on the hardware specifications that have been leaked so far, Moore’s Law is Dead drew comparisons like Project Helix having 70 compute units, compared to the PS6’s 54. Similarly, there is also some speculation on their respective processors’ clock speeds.

The YouTuber brought up the fact that, in the current console generation, while Xbox Series X has “better compute” than the PS5, Sony’s console was helped by the fact that it has better cooling systems, allowing it to run at higher speeds for longer times before heat becomes an issue. He noted that the difference between the two consoles in terms of horsepower came down to arguing about the Xbox Series X’s 12.1 teraFLOPS versus PS5’s 10.3 teraFLOPS.

“That’s a 30 percent difference. That’s a bigger teraFLOPS difference than last-gen; that’s notable,” said Moore’s Law is Dead when comparing the next-generation consoles. “But we don’t know the clock speeds. Maybe the XBOX Helix runs at 2.5 GHz, and the PS6 runs at 3 GHz. Then it’s pretty much a wash. Maybe it’s the other way around though. Maybe Sony wants to save on cooling, because I know it’s a 160-watt design; maybe Sony’s is 2.5 GHz and Microsoft’s is 3. In that scenario, Microsoft actually has a substantial win in compute.”

After discussing the differences in how the two next-generation consoles will handle memory bandwidth, he went on to note that “All I can tell you without knowing the clock [speeds] is that the bandwidth difference is smaller than last time, and the compute difference is a little larger. Net-on-net, it’s kind of similar to last-gen. And so, for me, that sounds like one of them is meant for 4K 144 [FPS], and one of them is made for 4K 60.”

Ultimately, Moore’s Law is Dead doesn’t believe the hardware differences between the PS6 and Project Helix will matter too much in the long run once games start coming out for them. Depending on the skill of developers and how much they can optimize for the software and hardware of the next-gen systems, it will largely come down to differences in frame rates. He also brought up the fact that consoles are typically used on displays that only go up to 120 Hz, which means that the PS6 wouldn’t lose out on much against Project Helix and its capability of higher frame rates due to having more compute units.

Sony hasn’t yet made any announcements regarding the PS6, and just about everything we might know about it largely comes from rumors. In case you’re interested, here are the biggest rumors you should know about. As for Project Helix, Microsoft has been talking about its next-generation console, noting that its ray tracing capabilities are well beyond what Xbox Series X/S is capable of.

The numbers speak for themselves with this one, with Streams Charts revealing 3,031,634 live viewers as opposed to the 2,257,117 from last year’s show. The February 2026 edition is currently the third-most-viewed, with 2,204,604 live viewers. That’s quite a leap in viewership, but that isn’t the only thing special about it. Well, aside from all the cool games it brought to the table, that is.

4,740 unique channels co-broadcast the event, including some big names from the streaming world. It also hit an all-time high in terms of average viewers, with 2,408,125 joining the fun alongside us. And with 4.4 million hours watched, it looks like the event continued to draw in crowds long after the livestream ended.

It’s easy to see how this one managed to do as well as it has. Whether it’s the gorey showcase of Marvel’s Wolverine that has convinced us that the game was going to be worth the long wait, or the extensive gameplay reveal of God of War Laufey, which has drawn over five million views individually despite a bit of divisiveness, PlayStation is riding high on the momentum.

The trend indicates that sales of first-party PlayStation games have been going down by several million copies year-on-year since 2020, and while there might be a slight uptick in its most recent numbers when compared to the 28.9 million games sold in FY 2024, time will tell if the trend actually manages to reverse itself.

As the report notes, FY 2020 was marked by several major first-party PlayStation releases, including The Last of Us Part 2 and Ghost of Tsushima. The period was also likely helped by the launch of the PS5 in the same period. In more recent times, however, the company has seen dips in sales despite the critically acclaimed 2024 release of Astro Bot. The uptick seen in the latest report could potentially be attributed to the release of Ghost of Yōtei on PS5 last year.

The data also raises the question of the market generally coming back to an equilibrium. It is worth noting that FY 2020 and the following couple of years were marked by a global pandemic that saw many stuck at home due to lockdowns. This, in turn, resulted in major upticks in game sales, which has also benefited Sony to quite an extent. Half a decade removed from the Covid-19 pandemic, however, the numbers could indicate that the actual ceiling of game sales might be lower than what lockdown-era numbers would indicate.

It is worth noting that the same period also saw Sony attempt to grow its audience by bringing some of its first-party games to PC. However, this has been observed by the company as a less-than-stellar policy, with the delayed PC releases of titles like God of War Ragnarok or Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 not really resulting in a boost in hardware or software sales on consoles. More recent reports have indicated that Sony has decided to stop releasing its single-player games on PC, with Astro Bot, Ghost of Yōtei, and Saros being the first major releases affected by this.

Another important thing to note is the fact that Sony hasn’t really been releasing too many new games in recent times. Development costs and times have only gone up with the increased visual fidelity offered by modern console hardware, which has led to the company only releasing between 2 and 3 new exclusive titles a year. 2026, for example, saw the release of Saros, and later in the year we will see Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and Marvel’s Wolverine.

Along with market conditions, the fact that Sony might just need to focus on releasing more games might also play a major role in the company’s strategy moving forward, especially since it has since moved on from its live-service ambitions, with several projects seeing cancellations in the last couple of years following the disastrous release of Concord.