Sony Expects PS5 Will Still Be In Short Supply Until 2023 | Ars Technica

If you’re a potential PlayStation 5 owner who has been unable to find the console on store shelves over the last 18 months, Sony has good news and bad news for you.

The good news is that the company now expects to produce 18 million PlayStation 5 units worldwide for the current fiscal year, which runs through March 2023. That projection, from the company’s latest earnings report, is up over 60 percent from the 11.2 million PS5 units produced and sold in the last fiscal year.

The bad news is that Sony thinks that increase still won’t be enough to satisfy the sky-high demand for the PS5 in the coming months. “We feel that there was a little bit higher demand than that [18 million units],” Sony Executive Deputy President and CFO Hiroki Totoki said during an investor Q&A portion of the call. “If the question is whether we can meet the demand, I think [we are] still short somewhat.”

“We are still behind or short”

Totoki went on to acknowledge that the current stock of available PlayStation 5 consoles at retail “still remain[s] very low” and that in terms of “provid[ing] our PlayStation units to customers smoothly on a timely basis, in that sense, we are still behind or short.”

That’s all a bit of an understatement. PS5 shipments that reach major US retailers routinely sell out in minutes of their occasional listing, according to stock tracker NowInStock. On sites like eBay, recent listings for the higher-end version of the console are routinely selling in the $600 to $750 range, a significant premium over the $499.99 retail price.

In supply-and-demand terms, that means Sony has to dig out of its current production deficit before it can hope to satisfy future demand. And while Totoki said Sony has “not given up” on procuring the components to produce even more PS5 systems this fiscal year, “at this point in time, what we can say safely is that we can achieve the necessary components for 18 million units.”