Tired of hitting dead ends trying to acquire the coveted PS5 and working against the bots scalping them in the last 18 months? Here’s some news that may give you a sigh of relief: Sony projects that it will sell 18 million consoles worldwide during this fiscal year, which runs through March 31, 2023 — a sign that the shortage of the PS5 may be coming to an end.
During its latest financial briefing on Tuesday, the company said that the PS5 sales forecast is up about 60% from the 11.5 million consoles it sold during the fiscal year that ended March 31, 2022. That projection is also based on the company’s “current visibility into parts procurement,” or its ability to acquire the components needed to build the PS5, which has been hindered by chip shortages and other supply chain issues wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Sony is confident that the shortages of chips and other parts are improving, CFO Hikori Totoki suggested that the projected PS5 sales number is a conservative one. He commented in a briefing call with investors (translated by VGC) that the PS5 stock is still in very short supply, saying that the company originally planned on producing 22.6 million consoles by this point of the system’s life cycle but reduced the target to 18 million due to component constraints. Even then, he believes that may not be enough to meet high consumer demand.
“18 million units is what we feel very comfortable we can get the parts and components for [during FY22],” Totoki said. “We feel that there is little bit higher demand than that, so if the question is if we can meet the demand, I think we’re still short somewhat.”
Sony sold about 2 million PS5 consoles in the first quarter of 2022, and 19 million overall since its release in November 2020. While 18 million consoles is still low in Totoki’s eyes, that’s enough to save PS5 fans the stress of seeing it getting sold out every time retailers announce stock drops, especially as the company prepares for the launch of the revamped PS Plus, which starts rolling out at the end of May.
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