Skip to main content

Sony expects PS5 shortages to last into 2022

Sony expects to struggle to meet the demands for PS5 into 2022, according to a new report from Bloomberg. This news comes by way of Sony chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki, who warned investors that PS5 shortages will likely continue for the foreseeable future.

“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 PS5 next year, our supply wouldn’t be able to catch up with demand,” Totoki said, according to Bloomberg.

As of March 31, Sony reported selling 7.8 million PS5 systems, which is slightly more than the PS4 sold within its first five months on the market. Though, the PS4 itself has continued to perform well, reaching 115.9 million units sold as of the end of March.

“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,” Totoki said to investors. Sony said it needs to continue to ramp up PS5 production if it wants to stay on track with (or surpass) the PS4’s sales figures.

The main reason Sony has struggled to meet PS5 demands has to do with a shortage of parts such as semiconductors. Semiconductor shortages have also impacted production of Nintendo Switch systems, which have been difficult to find for the better part of a year and are also expected to be scarce for the foreseeable future.

Both Sony and Nintendo are rumored to have hardware revisions planned for PS5 and Switch, respectively, though neither company has confirmed what these upgrades will entail.

Editors' Recommendations

Joseph Yaden
Joseph Yaden is a freelance journalist who covers Nintendo, shooters, and horror games. He mostly covers game guides for…
You need to try PlayStation VR2’s most psychedelic game yet
Key art for Akka Arrh shows psychedelic images.

You know that it's a busy year for gaming when a project by an industry legend launches with hardly any fanfare. That's exactly what happened in February 2023 with Akka Arrh. Created by Jeff Minter and his eccentric studio Llamasoft, the neon-tinted shooter is a remake of a 1982 Atari game that never saw the light of day after being deemed too difficult. Minter got the greenlight to revive the project, bringing it to life as a retro arcade shooter built in his unmistakable style.

While the project was exciting for game historians, it didn't exactly crack into the mainstream (it only has 37 user reviews on Steam). Thankfully, Akka Arrh getting a second chance to shine this week as its new PlayStation 5 version adds PlayStation VR2 support. While that might not be enough to make it a commercial hit, it does give PSVR2 owners a good reason to dust off their headset and check out a delightfully oddball project from one of gaming's true visionaries.
It's a trip
Akka Arrh is the rare example of a game that might be easier to explain on paper than in practice. In this throwback arcade shooter, players control a stationary ship that's tasked with protecting pods from attacking aliens. To fend off foes, players drop bombs that blow up in a different geometric pattern on each level's map. Every time an enemy touches that blast radius, it blows up in the same pattern, chaining to other enemies. The goal is to keep an uninterrupted chain going as long as possible by using a limited number of bullets to knock out foes that can't be destroyed by bombs and grabbing power-ups by hovering the cursor over them.

Read more
All upcoming PS5 games: 2024 and beyond
Dragon's Dogma 2 key art featuring a knight with a fiery hole in their chest.

The PlayStation 5 has been out for some time now, and its reception has been mostly positive. It includes lots of quality-of-life improvements over its predecessor, the PlayStation 4, such as faster load times, a solid-state drive (SSD) instead of a regular hard disk drive (HDD), and an improved controller in the form of the new DualSense. However, a console is only as good as the games available on it, and thankfully, the PS5 has you covered on that front as well.

While the machine already has a worthy library of great PS5 games, there are even more to look forward to, with some releasing as soon as this month, while others are still years away. In the video game world, it's not uncommon to be aware of games that are still several years out from release. It's also normal for a new game to be revealed and launched within just a couple of months. In this comprehensive list, we'll go through the major PS5 releases scheduled for 2023 and speculate on future games.

Read more
PlayStation lays off 900 people and shuts down London Studio
The PlayStation Studios logo in black and white.

Sony is the latest company in the video game industry to announce massive layoffs in 2024. We've learned that Sony Interactive Entertainment is letting go of about 900 people across several studios; PlayStation's London Studio will shut down as a result.

In a blog post, soon-to-depart Sony Interactive Entertainment President and CEO Jim Ryan says these cuts amount to about 8% of PlayStation's workforce. "Through discussions over the past few months about the evolving economic landscape, changes in the way we develop, distribute, and launch products, and ensuring our organization is future ready in this rapidly changing industry, we have concluded that tough decisions have become inevitable," Ryan explains. "The leadership team and I made the incredibly difficult decision to restructure operations, which regrettably includes a reduction in our workforce impacting very talented individuals who have contributed to our success."

Read more