Sony says that the PlayStation 5 will offer the "best possible value" but that doesn't "necessarily mean lowest price". 

In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan added that "value is a combination of many things. In our area it means games, it means number of games, depth of games, breadth of games, quality of games, price of games... all of these things and how they avail themselves of the feature set of the platform."

The PS5 is set to be revealed in a live stream event this Thursday 4 June at 1pm PDT, 4pm EDT, 9pm BST and 10pm CEST. Check out all the details

Ryan isn't too worried about the effect of any potential downturn in economies, saying that gaming is quite well-protected there as an industry. "Recent history has told us that gaming is one of the pastimes, and one of the businesses, that benefits in economically difficult times. It's quite logical, people don't have the money to go out so they stay at home."

Ryan also adds that one effect of the recent lockdown is that Sony realised it needed to allocate more resource to its existing online network. "We have devoted a lot of effort to making sure our network works. I am really proud of what we've done there. The days when Sony was criticised for the resilience of its networking activity, that should be consigned to history."

Ryan says that PS4 owners will continue to be extremely important to Sony because of the contribution they are still making to the company's finances. "If you say in broad-brush figures that we have a community of 100 million PS4 owners right now, and in the first couple of years...I don't know, somewhere between 15 and 25 million might migrate to PS5, that still leaves a huge number of people with PS4s.

"And that community is demonstrating an amazing stickiness, and willingness to stay engaged that, I think, the events of the past few months have just reinforced what we knew already."