According to some rumors, Sony would have reduced the production of PlayStation 5 for this fiscal year, due to the scarcity of the components necessary for its production. The company had previously set its production target at 16 million units I enter, but now it seems that the finish line has been lowered to 14.8 million, precisely because of the semiconductor crisis.
PlayStation 5: Sony decreases production?
Logistics problems and shortages of parts have become increasingly serious problems for Sony, the Chief Financial Officer said on October 28. Hiroki Totoki to investors in a conference call late last month. As if that weren’t enough, PS5 sales in the quarter ended September were slightly weaker than expected, confirming a downward trend since its launch.
The PS5, released a year ago, has always been very difficult to buy, as Sony is struggling to get enough units to distribute globally. The pandemic made chip supplies unpredictable and for this reason the assembly line is severely slowed down. To exacerbate the situation there are then the touts, who buy the console en masse to resell it at higher prices.
The frustration with Sony’s limited inventory is growing both among game producers and fans of the company. A major Japanese game publisher has found that players who used to buy PlayStation versions of its games are now gradually switching to buying the PC edition, for example, and PlayStation 5 titles have so far failed to make a major impact on the rankings. Japanese sales, which are dominated by the Nintendo Switch.
It is currently unclear how this one million fewer PlayStation on the market will impact in the long term anyway, as it could simply be a roll correction by Sony based on the console’s recent sales curve.