Sony sees the end of supply issues in sight for their PlayStation 5 console.
The company has projected they will be able to ship 30 million units of their nascent console for fiscal year 2023. That period would be between March 2023 to March 2024.
Overall, goals are to sell 18 million consoles before the end of this financial year, and 30.5 milliom consoles by the end of financial year 2023. 12 million of those sales next financial year will be from the older production models of the PlayStation 5, of which Sony had a significant number still on back order and had yet to deploy and sell to eager fans.
Sony is making a huge bet to reach this sales goal. If you may remember, they decided to ditch the disc drive as a mandatory part of the console. The company still intends to release a PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, with sales tiers approximately $ 100 apart from each other. If you buy the more expensive console, moving forward, the expectation is that you would spend the extra $ 100 for that disc drive.
It’s an interesting gamble that seems to have been informed by Microsoft’s success with the Xbox Series S. It assumes that the prevailing thread that most gamers will continue to buy games digitally and not get discs at this phase of the pandemic.
Sony has every reason to be optimistic, as analysts believe they have increased their shipments by 400 %. That sounds like an incredible number on its head, but don’t forget the broader context that made this even happen. The pandemic led to supply issues for all sorts of technology, which adversely affected Sony’s ability to make new consoles and sell them to as many consumers as wanted it. This increase is merely Sony finally catching up to all that pent up demand.
In spite of the popularity and demand for PlayStation 5, Sony isn’t guaranteed to meet even these ship targets. If you may remember, Sony actually increased the price of the console in several regions that aren’t the United States of America. If their supply issues have really been resolved, the company faces different challenges in the new market environment.
Indeed, what does it gain Sony to sell the most consoles of any company in this generation, and fail to make the kind of money one would expect from it? Sony has already taken steps to make money outside of their PlayStation consoles completely. That includes releasing and planning even more games for PC and mobile. Sony also launched a new business for gaming headsets and monitors for PCs, eight years after the company let go of their Vaio PC hardware business.
Ultimately, the gaming business is more than having the braggadoccio to tout large numbers of sales and dollars. The fundamental profitability of video games isn’t just about selling as many games as possible, but also concerns how that money is made, how much is invested and how well it matches expected returns. The future of the PlayStation business is very much on the line next year and the following years after.
Source: InsiderGaming
