The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with a severe chip shortage has made the PlayStation 5 close to impossible to land your hands-on
The PlayStation 5 may have launched over six months back but so far only a handful of people have managed to get their hands on a console in India. In case you’re someone who’s been waiting for Sony to polish out their supply issues before you can get your hands on one, well, there’s worse to follow.
According to Mashable, Sony’s Chief Financial Official Hiroki Totoki has now told financial analysts in a call that the PS5’s retail shortages will be the issue that fans will have to deal with till the end of 2022. “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,” Totoki said at a closed-door briefing.
He added, “Can we drastically increase the supply? No, that’s not likely. The shortage of semiconductors is one factor, but there are other factors that will impact the production volume. So, at present, we’d like to aim at second-year sales of 14.8 million, which was the second year of PS4.”
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with a severe chip shortage has made the PlayStation 5 close to impossible to land your hands on. If that wasn’t enough, there’s an abundance of scalpers too who make the most out of the shortage and sell units at even 5-6 times the retail price in the black market.
The news from Sony that the console will indeed remain in short supply for at least another year and a half does mean that Sony will find it difficult to boost sales targets for the PlayStation 5.
The statement from Totoki also somewhat negates what PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan had to say at the beginning of April.
As per Mashable, Ryan, speaking to Nikkei had then said that Sony’s supply partners we’re being told to increase production of PS5 units, to ensure more stock into stores by the end of this year. To be fair to him though, he did concede that the entire supply chain was badly hit because of the pandemic.