Almost two years after its launch, the PlayStation 5 is still a rarity and even if it is found, it will cost an exorbitant price. To overcome this scarcity, Sony is committed to increasing PS5 production as one of its focuses this year.
In a briefing with investors, Sony hopes to close the PS4 and PS5 sales gap this year after sales of the PS5 have lost out to its sibling. According to Sony's latest report, they sold 3.1 million fewer PS5 units than the PS4 in the same period after its release.
The low sales of the PS5 were not due to low demand but because Sony couldn't produce enough units due to the supply chain crisis. Based on Sony's data, it only took them 82 minutes to sell 80,000 PS5 units, while it took nine days to sell the same number of PS4 units.
After the supply chain crisis begins to recover, Sony hopes to produce more PS5 units. But the Japanese technology giant is also still worried about the effects of the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war on the availability of components and logistics.
To overcome the impact of these problems, Sony plans to cooperate with several suppliers in order to survive in unstable market conditions. They are also negotiating to maintain an optimal shipping route for PS5 shipments.
With this solution, Sony is optimistic that PS5 sales can beat PS4 again starting next year. Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan said after the initial production increase, Sony will continue to increase console production to unprecedented levels.
In addition to discussing PS5 production plans, Sony also revealed its plans to strengthen PlayStation Studios by acquiring more game studios, as quoted from Engadget, Saturday (28/5/2022).
Sony will also increase its investment in live services, PC gaming, and mobile. They are committed to launching 12 live services over the next few years, which does not include Destiny.
Seeing the growing market for mobile games, Sony also plans to bring half of its first party games to PC and mobile by 2025.
"By expanding to PC and mobile, and it must be said... also to live services, we have the opportunity to move from being present in a very narrow segment of the overall gaming software market, to being ubiquitous," said Ryan.