Jim Ryan says the PS4 will remain important “for three or four years”

The PS5 might be making headlines today, but there’s still a good few years of life left in its predecessor. In an interview with The Washington Post, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan suggested that Sony will be prepared to support its older console potentially as late as 2024.

Ryan claims that “the PS4 community will continue to be incredibly important to us for three or four years,” and that while “many will transition to PS5 [...] tens of millions will still be engaged with the PS4.”

In the short term, those PS4 players will be well-served, particularly as a handful of the PS5’s most significant games will also be coming to the new console’s predecessor - Horizon Forbidden West, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure will all launch on both current and next-gen hardware, offering a reasonable bridge between the two machines for those fans not yet ready to upgrade.

An extra few years is to be expected given the sheer number of PS4s Sony has shipped, as well as the company’s previous track record. Assuming four more years is a reality, the PS4 would make it to about 11 years old by the time production ends - on par with the PS3, and just a couple of years behind the PS2.

Of course, exactly what will happen when the console is no longer “incredibly important” remains to be seen, and it could be that production continues a little longer after that threshold has been met, even if the number of new games coming to the system dwindles.

If you haven’t got your PS5 pre-orders sorted already, you might be waiting a while for your upgrade.