While it remains to be seen when Sony will officially release the highly anticipated PS5, not everyone believes that the company’s next-gen gaming console will be a home run. Sure, the device will undeniably be incredibly popular and will ship millions of units, but one analyst maintains that the PS5 may not be able to live up to the success Sony enjoyed with the 2013 release of the PS4.
To this point, analyst Hideki Yasuda of the Ace Research Institute believes that Sony will ship upwards of 6 million units during the first four months following its release. Keep in mind that Yasuda’s estimate here is for units shipped, not units sold. As a point of reference, Sony sold 7.5 million PS4 units during the first four months following its release.
That said, the reality is that we’re still too far removed from the PS5 release date to take such predictions seriously.
We’re not worried that Sony will have another PS3 situation on its hands – a console which got off to a rocky start and only managed to sell 87.4 million units during its lifecycle – but Ace Research Institute believes that the design of a console can have a measurable impact on its success, which is also dictated by the price. The price of the PS5 has yet to be confirmed, as is the new design, so it makes it difficult to predict sales in the absence of those factors.
On top of that, the current coronavirus outbreak could have a further impact on the PS5’s performance out of the gate. Factories throughout China are impacted by the virus outbreak and the production of countless consumer electronics products has taken a hit. It’s still unclear exactly how long the effects of coronavirus will ripple, and the spread of the virus has yet to be slowed.
Incidentally, there’s no denying that Sony’s PlayStation 5 has big shoes to fill given how successful the PlayStation 4 was and continues to be. Recall, Sony at CES earlier this year announced that the PS4 is the second most popular console of all-time and has sold more than 106 million units to date.
As for when the PS5 might actually hit store shelves, that remains up in the air. While we’ve seen reports claiming that Sony is aiming for a holiday 2020 release, there are also rumblings that the device might not ship until 2021. The latter scenario is quite unlikely, but everything is up in the air right now as the coronavirus continues to spread in China.
