Japanese technology giant Sony has spoken for the first time about its plans for the next-generation successor of the successful Playstation 4 video game console.

"At this point, what I can say is it’s necessary to have a next-generation hardware," said Sony President Kenichiro Yoshida in an interview with the Financial Times, but stopped short of naming any new console Playstation 5.

The commitment to a next-generation console comes as discussion begins to heat up over the next round of the so-called 'console wars' and the future of dedicated gaming hardware.

Microsoft, Sony's main rival in the home gaming market, confirmed at the E3 2018 conference in June that its engineers were working on a next-generation successor to the Xbox One X console. Meanwhile, third-party publishers such as Bethesda announced that they were working on blockbuster games destined for the next-generation, rather than the current PS4 and Xbox One consoles.