PlayStation 4 launching after competition "undesirable", says Sony

Published Nov 24 2011, 16:24 GMT  |  By Matthew Reynolds

Sony has said that releasing the PlayStation 4 long after other systems would be "undesirable".

SCEE boss Jim Ryan has hinted that its next console may not give the competition much of a head start, like it did with the Xbox 360 and Wii this console generation.

"I think we would consider it undesirable to be significantly later than the competition [with the next PlayStation]," he told Eurogamer.

While there has been considerable speculation about an Xbox successor launching in the next few years and the release of the Wii U confirmed for 2012, there has been very little talk of PS4's arrival.

Ryan responded to the arrival of other new consoles by saying that the PlayStation 3 had plenty of "unfinished business".

"If you look at PlayStation 2, now in excess of 150m units installed globally, a huge majority of that was done at price points of £120 or lower," he said.

"[With PS3] we've only just hit £199 in the UK, so clearly there's a considerable untapped part of the market there."

Earlier this year Sony said it was not thinking about a successor, while a rumour suggested that the PS4 would launch in 2012 with Kinect controls.