Sony says it’s ‘unlikely’ PS5 supplies will drastically improve this year

Sony has said it’s unlikely that supplies of PlayStation 5 consoles will drastically improve in its current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2022.

In its latest financial results published on Wednesday, the corporation reported that PS5’s shipped numbers are slightly ahead of where PS4 was during the same period (7.8m vs. 7.6m). Sony said its current target for PS5’s second FY was to exceed the 14.8m PS4 consoles managed.

However, speaking during an investor call following its results (transcribed by VGC), Sony’s CFO said the company did not expect to completely resolve supply issues which have seen PS5 widely sold out since launch.

Hiroki Totoki said Sony was currently considering various solutions to help it cope with the global shortage of hardware components, including potentially altering hardware designs or sourcing secondary suppliers.

“As I said earlier, we’re aiming for more sales volume than the PS4 [during year 2]. But can we drastically increase the supply? No, that’s not likely,” he said.

“The shortage of semiconductors is one factor, but there are other factors that will impact on the production volume. So, at present, we’d like to aim at [beating] second year sales of 14.8 million, which was the second year of PS4.”

Asked specifically about the shortage of semiconductors, which is affecting all consumer electronics industries from smart phones to cars, Totoki suggested Sony had means with which it could cope.

“For example, we could find maybe a secondary resource, or by changing the design we could cope,” the exec said.

“In [the Electronics Products & Solutions business] we took a flexibility manoeuvre and in FY2021 we liked to flexibility adapt to the situation.”

Sony’s comments follow Microsoft’s warnings during its own financial results this week, in which it said it expects Xbox Series X/S supply issues to continue over the coming months.

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PS5 is tracking ahead of PS4 and Sony expects sales performance to continue this year

AMD, which makes the chips inside Xbox Series X/S and PS5, also said in late January that it expected supply issues through the first half of 2021.

In the games industry, console manufacturers have struggled with stock shortages for a year now, after the Covid-19 pandemic shut down essential supply chains and demand for gaming devices increased significantly.

Last month, Samsung became the largest tech company yet to voice concerns over chip shortages, by revealing it’s considering skipping the launch of a new Galaxy Note phone this year.