A new report from Bloomberg, covered by Gematsu, seems to show that Sony cut their production numbers for the PlayStation 5 down by 4 million units to a total of 11 million. This is the volume the company expected to have by the end of the current financial year, which ends on March 31 2021. This might seem like a stupid move, given that Sony wants to sell as many of these things as possible, but there does seem to be a fairly good reason for the cut in production.
It’s all said to be down to the production yield of the custom-designed system-on-chip that the PlayStation 5 requires. This is what people close to the matter have been telling Bloomberg, so it seems like it should be fairly accurate.
Sony only pushed up their production order to 10 million earlier this year. They explained that this was due to an increase in demand, the direct result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. That 10 million is expected by the end of the year, so at most it seems like Sony is only going to get an additional 1 million units between December and March 2021.
New information suggests that about 50 percent of the chips Sony need were produced. The chip yields are steadily increasing, but they’re yet to hit a stable level that Sony can rely on. As such, the expectations have been lowered to the point that the company can count on. It makes sense to do this for various projections and business reasons, but it will definitely have an impact on their PlayStation 5 marketing and overall success.
We have no data on just how many consoles Microsoft have for the Xbox Series S and Series X, but they seem to be quietly confident that they have enough to meet demand. With their pricing plans, they’re sure to see a lot of interest come November 10. Throughout this year the company has assured everyone that they have the stock to sell this year, which may be due to being fully prepared in 2019. Rumours of the new Xbox systems were doing the rounds throughout 2019, which would make sense if the company had already produced everything they needed for their new console launch the following year. Maybe Sony should have done the same.
