From the years of waiting, lofty sales projections, to the overwhelming frenzy when pre-orders finally opened… by every indication, this outcome was simply inevitable. And now, Sony’s CEO Jim Ryan has confirmed your worst fears: the PlayStation 5 has been sold out with no substantial availabilities until next year.
“Absolutely everything is sold,” Ryan tells Russian news outlet TASS.
“I’ve spent much of the last year trying to be sure that we can generate enough demand for the product… In terms of my executive bandwidth, I’m spending a lot more time on trying to increase supply to meet that demand.”
Of course, the matter of COVID-19 certainly hasn’t done Sony any favours. Ryan went on to explain how a global pandemic has hindered the console’s full-scale launch.
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“Of all the things that I’ve learned this year, one is that I wouldn’t plan on doing another big console launch in the midst of a global pandemic, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody else.”
“It’s been difficult, it’s been challenging from the production side, not being able to get anybody into the factories in Asia… Before we started production, we had to do all the manufacturing preparation by camera remotely. I mean, just imagine that for a precision device like the PlayStation 5.”
According to Techradar, an extremely limited amount of units may appear on Black Friday, though based on recent history, that doesn’t exactly guarantee anything. The good news? Ryan also provided some reassurances for those who decide/are forced to stick with the PlayStation 4.
“There are around 114 million PlayStation 4s in the world, the number of those who transfer if you keep that in mind is a small number. But for us, the PlayStation 4 community is going to remain incredibly important certainly for 2020, 2021, and 2022. Because in those three years, that will be the larger PlayStation community.”
Good luck out there, fellas. You’ll need it.
