Sony Japan has officially discontinued 'all but one' PlayStation 4 models

Sony Interactive Entertainment has officially discontinued production on the PlayStation 4 Pro and all other PlayStation 4 models except one in Japan. According to Japanese publication GameWatch, the one PlayStation 4 model Sony will continue to sell in Japan is the standard Jet Black 500GB PlayStation 4 ‘slim’ model.

This means that all other PlayStation 4 consoles but the ‘slim’ model will vanish in Japan, once current stock gets sold. In the meantime, Sony Interactive Entertainment will divert production to the PlayStation 5.

We have no word on whether the PlayStation 4 Pro is getting discontinued in Western territories too - but it’s likely that stock for the premium last-gen console will still be available there.

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It’s no surprise that core PlayStation 4 models would be discontinued at some point, especially when you consider how expensive the PlayStation 4 Pro must be to produce. However, it is shocking that it’s happening in Japan this early in the new console generation - we’re not even a year into it!

According to GameWatch, PlayStation 5 consoles continue to be in extreme shortage in Japan (and everywhere else), so Sony might just be trying to get next-gen consoles on shelves as soon as possible.

This doesn’t mean that all PlayStation 4 owners are left in Sony’s next-generation dust, however. Sony has confirmed plans to support the last-gen console with cross-gen games for at least three years.

Just recently, games like Sackboy: A Big Adventure and Spider-Man: Miles Morales were released on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Microsoft is going a step further, confirming that there won’t be any console-exclusive games for the Xbox Series X|S for the next two years.

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.