Sony pledges three more years of PS4

Sony has confirmed that it sees the PlayStation 4 console family as having at least three years left in its life cycle, after a comment from chief executive Tsuyoshi Kodera left fans wondering if a replacement was imminent.

Concerns about Sony's plans for the PlayStation 4 range of consoles, which launched in November 2013, were raised when the Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki posted a translated summary of Sony Interactive Entertainment chief executive Tsuyoshi 'John' Kodera's commentry to investors to Twitter stating that '[the] PS4 is entering [the] final phase of its life cycle.' Combined with rumours that Sony had already locked down AMD's Zen architecture to power the PlayStation 5, the result was a wave of panic fanned by the gaming press suggesting that the PS4's time was nigh.

Thankfully for those who enjoy the platform, or who have only recently picked up a PlayStation 4 or its more powerful mid-stream Pro refresh, it turns out Kodera is talking rather more long-term than first appeared to be the case. In a follow-up article on the WSJ, Mochizuki clarifies that Sony will be focusing on the PS4 for at least the next three years. 'We will use the next three years to prepare the next step,' Kodera explains in the clarification piece, 'to crouch down so that we can jump higher in the future.'

The news comes as Bloomberg publishes a piece suggesting that Sony may be looking at launching a new portable games console, even as it winds down its relatively unsuccessful PlayStation Vita. Details, however, were not discussed during the round-table interview with Kodera on Wednesday.