PS5 sales forecasts drops, signalling more stock issues for 2022

PS5 is facing lowered sales forecasts for the upcoming year at Sony.

In its fiscal quarterly earnings call yesterday on February 1 (via Venture Beat), Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki said that the company has lowered sales forecasts for the PS5 in the coming quarter. Simply put, sales of the new-gen console might be even lower than the past four months – Sony now expects to ship 11.5 million units this financial year, down from 14.8 million.

In the earnings call, Totoki noted that demand for the PS5 is incredibly high, but but partners supplying components to create the new-gen console simply can’t meet demands. This is, according to the CFO, chiefly down to the various chip shortages that suppliers are faced with throughout the world.

This is hardly surprising, given news from the past year. Over the course of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, certain chip components have been incredibly hard to come across for console manufacturers, leading to shortages in PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles, as well as graphics cards for producers like Nvidia.

Elsewhere in the earnings call, Totoki announced that Sony has now surpassed 17.3 million PS5 consoles shipped worldwide since launch in November 2020. However, it’s not all good news, as over the past four months, Sony has shipped a combined 3.9 million PS5 consoles, which is actually down compared to the same period last month, where 4.5 million PS5 consoles were sold around the world. Considering Sony is aiming for 100 million lifetime sales for the PS5, this is a solid start.