The next PlayStation won't arrive until May 2020 at the earliest

• Sony's next PlayStation console is deep in development, but it still has a long way to go until it's available to buy.
• The next PlayStation console, widely expected to be named PlayStation 5, won't arrive until May 2020 at the earliest.
• That's according to Sony, which told reporters that it won't release its next-gen game console any time in the next 12 months.
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Sony's next PlayStation is deep in production, but that doesn't mean it's on the verge of launching.

Quite the opposite in fact: Sony says that it's next PlayStation game console won't arrive until at least May 2020.

The news comes out of Sony's annual financial release, which outlined the Japanese electronics giant's coming year - and, notably, doesn't include the launch of the next PlayStation console.

The console hasn't been officially named, but it is widely believed to be be named "PlayStation 5" given historic precedent - PlayStations 1 through 4 say hello.

Sony did reveal a variety of details about the console in a recent interview with Wired.

Among the details:

1. The next PlayStation has a new central processing unit and a graphics processing unit from AMD. The former is based on AMD's Ryzen line, while the latter is part of Radeon's Navi GPU line.
2. It contains a solid state drive instead of a hard disc drive, intended to dramatically decrease loading times for games.
3. It supports PlayStation 4 games as well as PlayStation 5, and is also compatible with PlayStation VR headsets.
4. It's capable of powering 8K visuals and producing "Ray Tracing" effects - the long way of saying, "games will look better than ever."

And now, one more detail we know: It won't arrive until at least May 2020. Applying past precedent here as well, it's likely Sony won't launch the PlayStation 5 until holiday 2020 - but that remains to be seen.