During an interview with the Financial Times (paywall; via GamesIndustry.biz), Sony’s CEO Kenichiro Yoshida confirmed that the company has plans to release new hardware, which more or less confirms the PlayStation 5 even if Yoshida did not explicitly call it by name. The CEO was quoted as saying, “At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware.”
Sony has sort of confirmed the PS5 in the past, where a report from earlier this year saw Sony suggest that the next-gen hardware is about 3 years away. This basically refutes some earlier reports from analysts who believe that the PS5 could be launched in 2019 or 2020. That being said, Sony and Microsoft have done things a little different with the current-gen consoles compared to the past.
For example Sony has released PlayStation Pro while Microsoft released the Xbox One X which allowed gamer to play games in 4K resolution, all the while keeping games compatible with the PS4 and Xbox One. Some have expressed their belief that consoles could go the way of the dinosaur, but we suppose as long as people are buying, companies will keep producing.