Sony Cuts PlayStation 5 Sales Estimates as Production Slows

Consumers still looking to purchase Sony's PS5 will have to contend with even less consoles to go around throughout this holiday shopping season. On a conference call late last month whose details are only now surfacing via Blommberg, Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki told investors that logistics and parts procurement for the PS5 had become increasingly difficult. According to people familiar with the current situation at Sony, it seems that the company has reduced its PlayStation 5 production outlook for this fiscal year due to these constraints.

Initially hoping to have delivered 16 million PS5 consoles by March next year, Sony has now cut its PS5 sales guidance by one million consoles; and a lower number of manufactured consoles naturally translates into lower consoles for sale. The supply chain issues had already manifested in lower than expected PS5 console sales as of September 2021; the delta between Sony's initial outlook and actual production capabilities seems like it could be widening even further.

It's expected that the PS5 will remain in tight supply throughout the entirety of 2022; Sony is likely revising its sales outlook for the end of 2022 as well. A 22.6 million PS5 sales target by the end of 2022 seems somewhat unfeasible at the present time. Adding insult to injury, scalpers are still active on the PS5 front - and they will until there's been enough of a market penetration for the console that demand abates. Luckily, Sony is itself trying to stop scalpers in their tracks (at least in the U.S.) with a direct purchase option being made available through its website. 

Francisco Pires
Freelance News Writer

Francisco Pires is a freelance news writer for Tom's Hardware with a soft side for quantum computing.

  • dalek1234
    Interesting timing.

    Sony announced PS5 on 12th of November 2020. This article dates 11th of November 2021. Sounds like Sony booked PS5 production for exactly a year from release, and when that contract was up, they tried to book more production, but AMD said: "no way, we are going to focus our production on EPYC, where our margins are nice a sweet....get back in line"
    Reply
  • Heat_Fan89
    dalek1234 said:
    Interesting timing.

    Sony announced PS5 on 12th of November 2020. This article dates 11th of November 2021. Sounds like Sony booked PS5 production for exactly a year from release, and when that contract was up, they tried to book more production, but AMD said: "no way, we are going to focus our production on EPYC, where our margins are nice a sweet....get back in line"
    Keep in mind, that AMD also has to provide chips for Microsoft's Series S and X consoles. So there could be some truth to supply shortages. Right now pretty much every mfg and retailer are hoarding as much as they can. It's even affecting Apple where they had to deal with supply constraints.
    Reply