According to reports from Bloomberg and Nikkei, Sony is looking to significantly increase its production of PlayStation 5 consoles ahead of launch later this year.
Sony had originally planned to produce only 5-6 million units of the PlayStation 5 by the end of the 2020 financial year, in April 2021. By comparison PlayStation 4 sold 4.2 million between its launch in November 2013 and the end of that calendar year, and another million in the next two months. Since PS4 went on to be the fastest-selling home games console ever, recently passing 110m units, Sony’s PS5 plans would seem to be appropriate.
It can hardly have escaped attention that the world has been turning to gaming over the last few months. With much of the real world on pause, and outdoor activities seriously curtailed, gaming has found itself thrust into the limelight. That doesn’t just cover GTPlanet’s particular sphere of motoring and motorsports — where we’ve seen pro drivers become celebrity racing gamers — but across the gaming spectrum.
That’s reportedly prompted a change of tack from Sony, as it’s now aiming to build an enormous 10 million consoles by the end of this year. A good chunk of those are likely to go into stock for 2021’s first calendar quarter, as disruption to global shipping will make for delays in getting machines to retailers, but nonetheless it hints at Sony expecting an elevated launch window demand.
In addition, Sony has upped the number of DualSense controllers it plans to build, from an original 10 million units. We don’t have a raw figure to hand, but as that would represent two controllers per console, we assume there’ll be 20 million controllers coming for December.
With gaming and games consoles being in big demand, it’s a good time to be launching a new console. Both Sony and Microsoft will be producing new generations of their PlayStation and Xbox consoles, and both arrive at the end of this year.
