PS5 shortages will continue until next year as Sony warns it can’t ‘catch up with demand’ for new PlayStation
‘Even if we secure a lot more devices ... our supply wouldn’t be able to catch up with demand’, Sony’s CFO reportedly said
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Your support makes all the difference.Sony has warned that the PlayStation 5 will continue to be unavailable until 2022.
The console giant reportedly told analysts that shortages of components, such as semiconductors, is affecting production of the PS5.
“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,” Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said at a briefing about Sony’s financial results, according to Bloomberg.
Sony has apparently sold 7.8 million consoles until the end of March, and is aiming to sell 14.8 million by the end of the year; however, Totiki apparently said that Sony needed to increase production as demand will remain high throughout the pandemic.
“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,” he said.
Sony did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent before time of publication.
The PlayStation 5 has remained difficult to buy for months due to manufacturing issues, exacerbated by scalpers who purchase a large number of consoles as soon as they are available using online tools.
The issue has also impacted other manufacturers. Nvidia has warned buyers that their new RTX 30-series GPU is likely to remain in short supply for the rest of the year, impacting those looking to buy graphics cards for consoles or PCs.
“Overall demand remains very strong and continues to exceed supply while our channel inventories remain quite lean. We expect demand to continue to exceed supply for much of this year”, Colette Kress, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Nvidia, has said.
As well as the pandemic, consolidation of manufacturing companies and the development of computers in car manufacturing has affected the availability of materials.
Intel aims to boost production within the next nine months, but a proper solution could take years.
“We do believe we have the ability to help,” said company CEO Pat Gelsinger, “[but] I think this is a couple of years until you are totally able to address it,” he said. “It just takes a couple of years to build capacity.”
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