While Sony isn’t yet ready to discuss the PlayStation 5, the company has in the very least given us some general guidelines as we head into next-gen, expecting their PlayStation Plus service to provide a smooth transition into the PS5 lifecycle. 

Early this morning, Sony held it’s quarterly financial earnings call to discuss revenue stream and the outlook for the rest of the year. Amongst the news that the PS5 is still on track for this Holiday season,  Chief Financial Officer of Sony Corp., Hiroki Totoki talked a bit about the transition into their next-gen console, the PlayStation 5.

When you look at our results over the mid to long term, you can see that our Game business is steadily growing as evidenced by the growth of network services such as PS Plus and we expect this growth to continue going forward. The proportion of network services revenue continues to increase mainly due to the increase in PS the number of PS Plus subscribers.

We aim to leverage this large community and network services revenue stream to affect a smooth transition from the current console generation to the next, unlike in the past when profitability deteriorated significantly due to development and marketing costs incurred.

When asked during the Q&A segment about the ongoing trend seen in the third-quarter reportings for PS Plus and how big titles can draw in subscription, here’s what Hiroki Totoki had to say:

We have to steadily increase the membership for PS Plus. And how to increase the efficiency of retention there are a number of plans and ideas. Of course in August there was a revision of the price. If you subscribe for the entire year, you enjoy a certain discount and this has led to the increase of steady stable users. In providing such the users would enjoy the online multi-play and free play and also 100-giga PlayStation 4 is also combined and also they enjoy the promotions for discounts.

And by combining different ideas, the users’ favorite start and we were able to increase the membership. There is a trend of increasing the membership during the third quarter but by improving the services and providing a variety of services, we would like to continue this trend and have a robust increase of the customer base.

Now about the future generation, of course, we would definitely like to increase the base to prepare for the next-generation of the product. But there is very little that I can discuss about the future generation of the console today. But when the time is right we will disclose the new product.

Obviously, common sense tells us that PS Plus is going to be available on the PlayStation 5, but from the sound of things, it looks like Sony plans on ramping things up as we inch closer to the PS5 launch. Whether that’s going to be new major titles that are only available on the PS5, existing PS4 ones or a new type of offering all together is remained to be seen. As they said, they will talk about it when the time is right.