Chinese electronics company TCL has said it expects the PlayStation 5 Pro and the new Xbox Series X / S consoles to launch in 2023 or 2024.
The company, which reportedly ranked second in the global TV market in terms of sales volume in 2019, unveiled on Wednesday its forecast for the console industry during a presentation at which attend the Polish site PPE.pl.
During the press conference, which was used to show the latest TCL TVs, a company representative said they expected “Gen 9.5” to arrive in 2024.
The PS5 console covers trailer
The manufacturer suggested that unannounced consoles will offer a game at 60-120 frames per second with a resolution of 2160p and will offer the ability to play in 8K.
He also said he expects the PS5 Pro and the new Xbox Series X / S consoles to come with an equivalent to the upcoming AMD Radeon RX 7700 XT GPU.
Given the current inability of platform owners to meet the demand for PS5 and Xbox Series X due to the global shortage of chips, TCL’s forecast for a mid-generation hardware upgrade so soon might seem optimistic, unless redesigned consoles may offer a manufacturing advantage.
Piers Harding-Rolls of Ampere Analysis told VGC that he believed the timing was realistic, but that the low availability of current PS5 consoles could hold it back.
“I don’t expect this to be based on any specific knowledge of specific products, but it’s a reasonable estimate of when an upgraded PS5 could be expected to hit the market (3 years after launch),” the analyst said.
“However, the low availability of PS5, and therefore the slower-than-expected adoption of the console, is likely to affect these deadlines. As such, I think it would be more likely that a mid-cycle upgrade would reach end of 2024 at the earliest. “
Image credit PPE.pl
Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said last year that the company was considering several solutions to help it cope with the global shortage of hardware components, including the possibility of altering designs or search. of secondary suppliers.
The issue was raised again at Sony’s financial results briefing earlier this month. During the event, Totoki was asked what steps Sony is taking to combat semiconductor shortages, which Intel recently warned would now probably last until 2024.
Although Totoki’s response did not specifically refer to PS5, he said (transcribed by VGC) that “in different areas … we have changed our source of acquisition and we have also changed our design, among others. So, bottom line is that we’re really looking forward to it.
Last May, it was reported that Sony would begin production of a redesign of the PS5 in 2022, which would feature a “new semi-custom CPU” of 6 nm from AMD.
Taiwanese business website DigiTimes claimed that suppliers, including TSMC Semiconductor Casting, planned to start producing the redesigned PS5 console between the second and third quarters of this year.
This month it also emerged that Sony appears to have registered a new PS5 model in Japan.
The company recently received construction design certification for what appears to be a new “CFI-1200” series model with up-to-date radio equipment.
A revised PS5 model was also launched in 2021, although the redesign focused exclusively on components and did not show any significant external changes.