We’re now seven months into the life cycle of the PlayStation 5, and it’s still virtually impossible to find a console in stock anywhere. There are a number of reasons for this, some of which we’ll get into shortly, but if you were hoping the PS5 drought might come to an end in the near future, we have some bad news for you. According to Bloomberg, one of Sony’s chief executives recently told analysts that supply could be constrained into 2022.
At the end of last month during its earnings announcement, Sony revealed that it had sold 7.8 million PS5 consoles through March 31st, 2021. The company also announced it was planning to sell at least 14.8 million consoles before the end of the fiscal year. After reporting its financial results, Sony spoke to analysts about the difficulty of keeping up with the demand for its next-generation gaming console. People who were present for those remarks told Bloomberg that Sony’s CFO made it clear demand wouldn’t likely be met any time soon.
“I don’t think demand is calming down this year and even if we secure a lot more devices and produce many more units of the PlayStation 5 next year, our supply wouldn’t be able to catch up with demand,” Sony’s CFO Hiroki Totoki reportedly said during the briefing. He also said: “We have sold more than 100 million units of the PlayStation 4 and considering our market share and reputation, I can’t imagine demand dropping easily.”
If Sony could somehow ramp up production to meet demand, it seems inevitable that the PS5 would outsell the PS4 over the course of its first year on the market, but the global semiconductor shortage is not expected to be resolved in the near future either. Therefore, finding a PS5 will continue to be a challenge over the summer and into the fall, at the very least. In all likelihood, those shopping over the holidays won’t fare any better.
As The Verge points out, this runs counter to the narrative Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan was trying to sell in February when he told the Financial Times: “It will get better every month throughout 2021. The pace of the improvement in the supply chain will gather throughout the course of the year, so by the time we get to the second half of [2021], you’re going to be seeing really decent numbers indeed.”
For now, if you’re in the market for a PS5, you’re going to have to be just as diligent as you were last year, following as many Twitter accounts as possible and staying logged in to every retailer’s website just in case you can get lucky and add a console to your cart before the thousands of humans and bots with which you’re competing.
