The PS4 is reaching the ‘final phase’ of its life cycle, evidence points to Zen-based PS5

A few weeks ago, the first PlayStation 5 rumours began popping up on the web. At the time, it was brushed off due to a few outlandish claims, such as a potential 2018 launch window, but some additional fuel was added to the fire this week. For starters, Sony has admitted that the PS4 is in the “final phase of its life cycle”.

Sony had a big meeting earlier today, with the Wall Street Journal's Takashi Mochizuki in attendance. During the meeting, Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO, John Tsuyoshi Kodera, shared some insights into Sony's plans. He acknowledged that “the PlayStation 4 is in the final phase of its console life cycle”.

That would indicate that a PS5 is on the way sooner rather than later. However, it isn't the only piece of evidence currently floating around. The folks at Phoronix recently noticed that one of Sony's programmers recently began submitting code changes across multiple commits for ‘ZNver1 LLVM improvements'.

These code changes point towards a shift to a Zen architecture based system, which Sony is working on compiling software for. Currently, Sony doesn't have any Zen-based products on the market, so the theory goes that work on PlayStation 5 software has begun, with plans to launch with the Zen CPU architecture.

It is worth noting though that it is still very early to be talking about PlayStation 5. The PS4 still has a healthy line-up of games left in it for not just this year, but 2019 too. The Last of Us 2, Death Stranding and Ghosts of Tsushima might end up being the last big PS4 exclusives for the generation.

KitGuru Says: I don't think we'll be hearing about the PS5 officially until 2020, but it is still exciting to see that we are starting to head towards a new generation. Do you guys think 2020 would be a good launch window for the PS5? Or do you think this generation should last a bit longer?

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