With recent news that the Nintendo Switch 2 is to be delayed into 2025, thankfully we may still have some new gaming hardware to play with this year as analysts are predicting that 2024 will see the launch of the new expected PlayStation 5 Pro refresh.

“There seems to be a broad consensus in the game industry that Sony is indeed preparing a launch of a PS5 Pro in the second half of 2024,” Serkan Toto, CEO of Tokyo-based games consultancy Kantan Games, said in an interview on CNBC.

“And Sony will want to make sure to have a great piece of hardware ready when GTA VI hits in 2025, a launch that will be a shot in the arm for the entire gaming industry.”

The industry has been suffering for over a year now with mass layoffs, delays, and underperformance, some of which have been a knock-on from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Video gaming boomed during lockdowns and companies invested heavily but seem to have been caught out when the growth did not continue when the world opened up again, leading to the nightmare scenario of tens of thousands of games industry workers losing their jobs.

With the insecurity of Microsoft’s position in the hardware market and the Nintendo delay, it could mean a free run at 2024’s holiday period for Sony, who also have had to realign expectations of performance in recent weeks. They will also have seen the hit that Nintendo shares took at the start of the week just based on a delay of a few months.

A new PS5 hardware refresh would bring a welcome boost for fans of the Sony console, but more casual gamers would also likely need to see value for money and not just a higher profit margin in order to satisfy nervous shareholders.

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