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Bloomberg: It's Going to Get Even Harder to Buy a PlayStation 5 (chip shortage)

Bullet Club

Member

It's Going to Get Even Harder to Buy a PlayStation 5​


Sony Group Corp. has reduced its PlayStation 5 production outlook for this fiscal year due to component and logistics constraints, according to people familiar with its operations.

The Tokyo-based entertainment giant had previously targeted more than 16 million units assembled in the year ending March, setting it up to achieve its sales goal for the period and also get a head start on the subsequent year’s production. The company has now cut that number down to about 15 million, making its aim of 14.8 million PS5 sales by March difficult, the people said, asking not to be named as the information is not public.

Logistics issues and parts shortages have grown more severe for Sony, Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki told investors on a conference call late last month. PS5 sales in the quarter ended September were slightly weaker than expectations, he said on Oct. 28, having previously warned that any resurgence in the spread of Covid-19 may impact the company’s components supply. The PlayStation 5 became the fastest Sony console to reach 10 million units sold this July, but it has fallen behind the sales pace of its predecessor PlayStation 4 since then.

SChx92G.png


The PS5, released a year ago, has been hard to find for the full duration of its time on the market, constrained mainly by Sony’s struggle to get enough units distributed globally. Uneven vaccine rollouts across developing nations where Sony suppliers have their production bases have made supplies of chips and parts unpredictable. Assembly partners are in daily contact with component makers to confirm that shipments will arrive as scheduled, which is not always the case, the people said.

Sony did not respond to a request for comment.

Components in short supply include unremarkable but essential gear like power management chips. Chipmakers from Toshiba Corp., which provides such power chips, to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. have warned that the fabrication situation is unlikely to normalize even during 2022.

Sony is far from alone in its struggle to navigate a clear path through shortages. Rival Nintendo Co. cut its full-year sales forecast for the Switch console family by 1.5 million units in early November, while Bellevue, Washington-based Valve Corp. pushed back the debut of its Steam Deck portable console from December to February, citing global supply chain issues.

Frustration around Sony’s limited inventory is growing among game makers as well as fans of the console. One top Japanese game publisher has found players who used to buy PlayStation versions of its games are now gradually shifting to purchasing the PC edition, said an executive who asked not to be named. PlayStation 5 games have so far failed to make an impact on Japanese sales charts, which are dominated by Nintendo’s Switch platform, data from market tracker Famitsu show.

Sony’s manufacturing partners expect the PlayStation 5 to remain in tight supply through 2022 and said that producing enough units to achieve the company’s target of 22.6 million sales in the next fiscal year will be challenging.

Source: Bloomberg
 
Lol Takashi Mochizuki surely loves making these articles about Sony. His articles are always negative stuff based on unproven claims.
Sony's target has always been to at least match the 14.8m units the PS4 did.
This 16m units number has literally no source.
There's an official target and an internal target. The official target is usually set lower so that you can get celebrated for "exceeding expectations" once the numbers drop. Apparently they had an internal target of 16m.
 
I paid over retail, and while I wasn't thrilled about it, I know I'll get my money's worth outta it in the long run.
I tried for over six months using stock alerts and such with no luck. I lost count of how many consoles I'd put in a cart only to lose it to crashes before I could complete the damn purchase even with info saved. Finally managed to snag one on Amazon from a second party seller.
 

Elios83

Member
There's an official target and an internal target. The official target is usually set lower so that you can get celebrated for "exceeding expectations" once the numbers drop. Apparently they had an internal target of 16m.

Apparently = zero proof given and based on Mochizuki's desire to write the usual negative Sony article to get a bunch of hits on Bloomberg.
He has been doing that for two years at this point even claiming fake things like poor yields with the main chip.
Sony has always stated that their target is 14.8m for the current FY.
They warned that things are getting challenging though.
So far they have been tracking PS4 shipments really closely.
We'll see how well they're going to do over the quarter. In the meantime it's kinda useless to give much credit to Mochizuki's articles who has a history of writing just negative Sony related articles.
 

MonarchJT

Banned
this will push Sony to greatly accelerate the release of games on PC. or in the same time span it will never reach the numbers of the PS4 (in 7 years)
 
Supply chain issues affecting almost every industry right now. This is why you're seeing governments pivot to prevent this sort of calamity in the future.

Are you referencing the multi-billion dollar TSMC 5nm gigafab they're building in Arizona in the US? As well as the multi-billion dollar investments EU governments are putting up to get chip fabrication from TSMC on EU soil?
 

Banjo64

cumsessed
Got mine in June when there was a steady flow coming in to the UK (weekly shipments of 10-20k) - thank god.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
Man, it makes you wonder if it would have been better to wait until 2023 to launch the new consoles. Feels like the generation hasn’t really started, and wont until at least then due to cross gen. I get the feeling that games like ratchet, flight sim, or demons souls will be few and far between
 

Evil Calvin

Afraid of Boobs
And lets face it....a lot of those have gone to scalpers. I would say 25% AT LEAST. Just a guess based on people I know, podcasts I listen to, Tweets I read, forum boards I peruse and Reddit threads I look at. I'm talking out of my ass but I think a big chunk are in scalpers hands. 25%+? At least a lot more scalpers this generation than previous generations.
 

jm89

Member
And lets face it....a lot of those have gone to scalpers. I would say 25% AT LEAST. Just a guess based on people I know, podcasts I listen to, Tweets I read, forum boards I peruse and Reddit threads I look at. I'm talking out of my ass but I think a big chunk are in scalpers hands. 25%+? At least a lot more scalpers this generation than previous generations.
25% is insane no chance scalping is that bad. Even if we assume that many are scalped they will eventually end up in the hands of consumers, scalpers would have to be idiots to hold onto stock for long periods.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
Microsofts push into PC and streaming gaming makes it look like they had knowledge from the future at this point.
Microsoft just accepted that they could sell more software by not forcing people to buy proprietary hardware to run their software. It's just economics. Having your main revenue pipeline constrained because you can't produce hardware required to run your software is a problem. Losing money on hardware so people can buy your software is a weak long term position. Considering how little Sony makes on hardware they could easily increase their revenue if their first party games released day and date on PC and console.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
And people are still mad Sony went back on their generation ideology. They had to when they can't produce that many new gen console. Ignoring PS4 userbase wasn't a smart decision any ceo would take anyway.
 
And people are still mad Sony went back on their generation ideology. They had to when they can't produce that many new gen console. Ignoring PS4 userbase wasn't a smart decision any ceo would take anyway.
they have produced and sold record numbers of PS5's
 

Holammer

Member
Releasing 1st Party games for now on PC and PS4 is from a business perspective the only sensible option, really. Of course evergreen titles like Gran Tursimo will not come to PC but the rest will for sure.
Turismo was on Geforce Now datamine and and it's been accurate thus far.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Supply chain issues affecting almost every industry right now. This is why you're seeing governments pivot to prevent this sort of calamity in the future.
Yup.

And things like chips are worse because it's highly concentrated in Asia and needs boats and ports to get the final product over.

Our company has shortages too and we dont even involve chips. And almost everything we make is made domestically in Canada and US plants strictly using trucks. And we still got shortages during covid.
 
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