New report says PS5 may go public in November 2020 for $499

PlayStation 5 will not be released soon, but we can still see more and more reports about its features. Sony has identified some of them, including backward compatibility and ultra-high-speed solid-state storage, while AMD has publicly said it is making new chips to support PS5.

Although we will have to wait a while before it can be officially released, a new report has provided forecasts of the price and release date of the console.

According to Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Ace Research, the console will be available in November 2020 and will sell for $499, according to WinFuture. This certainly sounds in line with our expectations of Sony. PlayStation 4 launched in North America in mid-November 2013, starting at $399. PS4 was discounted in the following years, and PS4 Pro launched in November, three years after PS4's launch, when it received the same price of $399.

PS5 is expected to make several major upgrades based on PS4 and PS4 Pro, which may explain why the price is higher. At the same time, considering that Sony is targeting the holiday sales season, the November release makes a lot of sense.

The analyst predicts that Sony will sell about 6 million units in the first fiscal year ending March 2021 and another 15 million the following year. Yasuda sees Xbox 2 as its main competitor to the new PlayStation. According to the same analyst, the recently announced Google Stadia streaming platform is clearly not a strong competitor to traditional game consoles such as PS5.

In other words, Yasuda's remarks should be treated properly. Although the November 2020 release window sounds reasonable, there is no way to verify the console's price. Sony will not disclose details in the near future because it does not plan to launch the console at the 2019 E3 Olympic Games.