Sony president Kenichiro Yoshida told the FT that “it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware”, but he declined to say whether the successor would be branded the PlayStation 5.

The announcement comes as Sony and others have been experimenting with streaming games as an alternative. Sony allows titles on its cloud-based PlayStation Now service to be played via PCs, and at one time also provided access to some TVs and Blu-ray players.

Microsoft has just announced Project xCloud, which will allow Xbox One games to be played on smartphones and tablets.

Meanwhile, Google unveiled Project Stream last week. The “technical test” allows select gamers to play the latest Assassin’s Creed game via the search firm’s Chrome web browser.

But internet-based solutions face latency issues – the delay tends to increase the further away the player is based from the data centre. That is a problem for fighting and shooting titles, where success or defeat can be determined by how many milliseconds it takes a player to react.

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