Currently, PS5s are not being sold or just a few of them are on the market for customers to buy as Sony cites shortage on components. The Japanese tech giant is struggling with stock problems despite having such a good start when it finally launched the elusive PS5 console. Sony was able to sell 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in 2020 which matched the total it achieved from selling the Play Station 4 over seven years ago.
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Why PS5s are not being sold
The Japanese company is seriously struggling with production which could most likely affect its targeted sales of 14.8 million units for the next fiscal year. As the company tries to meet consumer demand, little of what is left of the consoles has been bought off by scalpers. These are people who buy on-demand quality products in huge amounts that they sell off at almost 3 times the retail value.
Looks like the stock problem is not going away anytime soon as the Chief Financial Officer at Sony Hiroki Totoki said, “It’s difficult for us to increase the production of the PS5 amid the shortage of semiconductors and other components. We have not been able to fully meet the high level of demand from customers [but] we continue to do everything in our power to ship as many units as possible to customers who are waiting for a PS5.”
The PS5s are not being sold due to scarcity of these components (the semi-conductors that are used in AMD processing chips) has driven the company’s manufacturing costs of the Play station 5 consoles up to $450 for each unit sold causing the company to sell at a loss on the $399 Digital Edition that lacks an optical disc drive.
Sony has to work out this challenge as the Play Station 5 console has faced unprecedented demand since it was launched in November 2020. The stock problem could, however, persist till April or even July since the company has not specified the timeline for when this issue will be resolved.
As the PS5s are not being sold, the current shortage of components has also hit Microsofts’s Xbox Series X which is suffering a similar fate.
The company said it is working around increasing stock soon despite the current challenge and make at least 3 million consoles available. For those who missed out on pre-orders, it might be months until they can buy one of Sony’s Play Station 5 consoles again.
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