PS5 It has been more than 5 years since it was launched in November 2020. Looking back Sony In the past, the pace of console generation changes was that PS3 was launched in 2006, PS4 in 2013, and PS5 in 2020. Almost each generation was separated by about 7 years. According to this rule,PS6 It will probably fall around 2027, which means there is a chance to see the next generation of PlayStation next year.
Although Sony has not officially announced any news about the PS6, a whistleblower with high credibility in the hardware leak community has recently shared a lot of hardware details about the PS6 on the forum. Several of them are worthy of attention, especially the storage space and price.
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PS6 is rumored to use 1TB SSD and AI compression technology to lower the price, and there will be no optical disc drive
A man named Kepler_L2 An AMD hardware whistleblower who has been active in the well-known gaming forum NeoGAF for a long time. In the past, he had a certain degree of accuracy in breaking the news about AMD-related hardware, so he has attracted the attention of many technology media.
Recently, he has shared a number of revelations about PS6, which so far mainly include the following points:
- Memory: PS6 is expected to be equipped with 30GB GDDR7 memory, using a 160-bit memory bus with a bandwidth of up to 640GB/s
- Processor and display chip: Using AMD Zen 6 CPU architecture with RDNA 5 GPU
- Storage space: only equipped with 1TB SSD, no optical drive
- Estimated selling price: The manufacturing cost is approximately US$760 (approximately NT$24,900), and the estimated selling price is US$699 (approximately NT$22,900). Sony will use subsidies to lower the price.
- Game Capacity: Will natively support AI neural texture compression technology to significantly reduce game file size
- Time to market: PS6 and PS handheld consoles still maintain the target time of the end of 2027
The most noteworthy thing is that Sony intends to rely on “AI compression technology” to reduce game capacity, so it is only equipped with a 1TB SSD (unlike the PS5 Pro which has 2TB) and no optical disc drive, thereby reducing costs and selling prices.
The AI compression technology is “Neural Texture Compression (NTC)”. The reason why modern 3A games require 100GB or more is largely because the texture data in the game is very large, such as the roughness of stones, the reflection of metal, the texture of skin, etc., all of which require a large amount of image data to present.
The concept of neural texture compression is to use a small AI neural network to compress the texture data that originally takes up a lot of space into a very small size. When the game is actually running, it can be decompressed and restored in real time through the AI accelerator on the GPU. To put it simply, AI is used to remember what these textures look like and restore them instantly when needed, instead of storing all the complete original images on the hard drive.
Video of someone testing this technology before:
According to test data released by NVIDIA, NTC technology can compress the storage space of texture data to about one-tenth of the original size, saving about 90% of space.
For a 100GB game, if the texture accounts for half (50GB), it may only require about 5GB after NTC compression. The overall game capacity may be reduced from 100GB to about 55GB. The reduction is very large. In this way, the space of a 1TB SSD is more than enough.
As for the launch time of PS6, although Kepler_L2 said it still maintains the goal of launching it by the end of 2027, according to a report by Bloomberg in February 2026, Sony is internally considering delaying the launch of PS6 to 2028 or even 2029. The main reason is that the global memory market is affected by the surge in demand from the AI industry, and the supply of high-speed memories such as GDDR7 continues to be tight and prices remain high. For PS6 Cost control creates considerable pressure.
Image source:NotebookCheck
Source: KOCPC Chinese