The man who ran PlayStation says the next console doesn't need more power, it needs to be cheap. With the PS5 now $150 more than at launch and the PS5 Pro at $899.99, Sony's former chief just put his finger on the biggest problem in its hardware plan.
Shawn Layden ran PlayStation. He was one of its top executives through the PS4 era, helped launch PlayStation Experience, and walked out to a live orchestra for the God of War reveal at E3 2016. So when he says Sony’s next console is headed the wrong way, that’s not an Xbox fan talking trash. That’s PlayStation’s own former boss.
Speaking on The Trophy Room: A PlayStation Show, the podcast hosted by Joseph Moran (Mr Bad Bit), Layden took aim at the idea that the PS6 has to be a bigger, more powerful box. His line is already all over X, and it’s a good one:
“I think we have enough power in the machine. The innovation needs to come not from making PS6 for $1,200, it’s to make another PS5 for $300. Now, that would be true innovation.”
To be clear about what that $1,200 is: it’s Layden’s hypothetical number for an overpowered next-gen console, not a price Sony has announced. Sony hasn’t put a price, or even a date, on the PS6. Layden also said up front that he left Sony seven years ago and has no inside knowledge of its current plans, per Lords of Gaming’s rundown of the interview. This is a former insider’s warning, not a leak.
But here’s why it lands so hard. He doesn’t need inside info. Sony’s own price tags make his argument for him.
The PS5 went the wrong way
Consoles are supposed to get cheaper as a generation goes on. That’s how the PS4 worked: it launched at $399, and the PS4 Slim brought it down to $299 in 2016. Layden pointed to the PS2, which you could grab for $99 by the end of its life, as an example of how lower prices brought more people into PlayStation.
The PS5 did the opposite. It launched at $499, with the Digital Edition at $399. Sony raised prices in August 2025, then raised them again effective April 2, 2026, citing “continued pressures in the global economic landscape” in its PlayStation Blog announcement. Sony’s current U.S. recommended prices are $649.99 for the PS5, $599.99 for the Digital Edition and $899.99 for the PS5 Pro. That’s about $200 more for the digital box than it cost on day one, six years in, according to Engadget’s price history.
Layden said it plainly, per GamesRadar: “This is the first platform that I’ve seen that has gone up in price over time.”
That’s the part people should sit with. The players who traditionally show up late in a generation, the families and budget buyers waiting for a lower price, are now looking at a higher official retail price than the console launched with. Layden’s point is that those are exactly the people a console maker needs, and a pricier PS6 pushes them even further away.
“Differences only dogs can hear”
Layden’s other jab is at the pitch itself. The jump from PS1 to PS2 was “incredible,” he said, and so was going from CD to DVD. The rumored PS6 upgrade, as GamesRadar relays it, is “even more ray tracing and more teraflops,” and to the average player, “these are differences only dogs can hear.”
His prescription is blunt: “What the company needs to do is do what it’s never done, which is don’t iterate the console. Make it smaller, make it cheaper, do all the things you can around that. It’s more than enough power to build the kind of games all of us want to play.”
That’s a fascinating thing for a former PlayStation chief to say, because Sony’s last hardware move went the other way. The PS5 Pro was the power play, and it now sits at $899.99. If Layden’s right that most players can’t see the difference, Sony’s premium push is asking people to pay a lot more for something they can barely notice.
He also had a warning about the handheld chatter. Layden said Sony could succeed with a handheld if it became the main focus, but questioned whether any company can launch and support a new handheld and a traditional console at the same time. He compared running both to operating two separate companies, remembering the PSP and Vita years.
PlayStation's ex-boss says a cheap PS5 beats a $1,200 PS6. Is he right?
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An expensive box is not the only answer
PlayStation fans have a fair defense here: the price hikes aren’t purely a Sony choice. GamesRadar ties rising console costs to the RAM shortage driven by AI data centers buying up memory, and notes that Xbox Series X|S hardware also costs more today than it did at launch. Every console maker is feeling that squeeze.
But that cuts both ways. If memory is this expensive, a next-gen box built around even more power is going to cost even more. That’s Layden’s whole point. And it’s where Xbox’s approach starts to look smart rather than strange. Xbox has spent this year making its games playable on hardware people already own, including the rebuilt Xbox PC app that Xbox says launches up to 60% faster. When the box gets expensive, Xbox’s answer is that you don’t always need a new one.
Sony’s answer so far has been to charge more for the box. Its own former boss just said, on a PlayStation podcast, that this is backwards. PlayStation fans will have a hard time arguing with $649.99.
Image: Sony Interactive Entertainment (via Radio Times)
Sources
- GamesRadar: PS6 doesn’t need more power, ex-PlayStation boss says
- Lords of Gaming: Shawn Layden Discusses PS6, Bloodborne, Insomniac Games, and the Future of PlayStation (The Trophy Room interview)
- PlayStation Blog: New Price Changes for PS5, PS5 Pro, and PlayStation Portal
- Engadget: How much the PlayStation 5 cost in 2020 vs. 2026
- Pubity on X
