The PlayStation 5 is wholly stocked in stores worldwide and will meet Sony’s annual sales target of 25 million devices.
“This holiday season will be the first holiday season in which we will be fully stocked on PlayStation 5 in every geography,” Eric Lempel, Sony’s head of business operations, said earlier this week in an interview.
This follows a string of successive console shortages, which prevented many players throughout the world from obtaining PS5 consoles. Poor supply volumes caused by a global chip shortage and supply chain issues severely limited the availability of the PlayStation 5, as well as Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and S.
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Buy any two PS5 items and you can save £15 (OR £30 if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, woo). pic.twitter.com/d5tAqIbVvs
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After their November 2020 releases, the PS5 and Xbox Series X were famously challenging to locate in retailers. Sony, for one, has struggled to match demand for the PS5, experiencing supply shortages each year since its release.
But, according to Lempel, that is no longer the case, and this will be the first year in which the PS5 is fully stocked at Sony stores and other distribution partners throughout the world ahead of the holidays.
“We launched back in 2020,” Lempel explained. “We experienced the same supply chain issues that everyone else did.” Unfortunately, we were unable to provide a PS5 to every consumer who requested one.”
Sony Interactive Entertainment Senior Vice President & Head Of Global Marketing Eric Lampel:
“We’ve had consoles a bit here and there over the last three holidays, but this is the first time we’re in full supply and we’re thrilled about that.”
“We launched back in 2020, and the… pic.twitter.com/ujUOu5mYfs
— @Zuby_Tech (@Zuby_Tech) October 26, 2023
Sony had set a target of 25 million PS5 systems shipped in 2023. That would make it the finest year ever for a PlayStation system.
Lempel said the business was on course to fulfill that goal this year and anticipates “record-breaking sales,” thanks to a rebalancing of supply and demand and interest for titles such as the recently launched Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which is exclusive to the PS5. Sony will next announce profits on November 9.
Keeping an Eye on the Competition
Sony’s popular PS5 device has already sold millions of units, outselling Microsoft’s Xbox Series X.
Microsoft is placing a large bet on gaming being a more critical component of its company. That is why the Redmond, Washington-based company paid such a high price for Activision Blizzard.
Activision will be sold to Microsoft in a $69 billion transaction, with hit titles such as “Call of Duty,” “Candy Crush,” and “Crash Bandicoot” now joining Microsoft’s Xbox gaming division.
Rival companies, including Sony, were concerned that Microsoft would make games like Call of Duty exclusive to its Xbox platform. The Call of Duty video game franchise is worth billions of dollars.
Cloud gaming rights, which refer to video game streaming via remote data centers, will be sold to French publisher Ubisoft.
After reaching an agreement with UK regulators on the deal’s competition consequences, Ubisoft will control the cloud rights to Call of Duty and allow people to stream the game on its Ubisoft+ subscription platform.
Sony had previously expressed concern about the detrimental impact of the Microsoft-Activision merger, even warning that it may lead to decreased game quality on PlayStation consoles if Microsoft chose to weaken the programming in any manner.
Microsoft, for its part, stated that it has no plans to do so and that the Activision purchase will benefit the competition.
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Looking for Collaborations
Sony should do anything in response to Microsoft’s move to catch up in the intellectual property land grab that has been going on in gaming; Lempel said Sony is always looking for new developer partners to make exclusive titles for PS5.
However, he emphasized that efforts to expand Sony’s massive repertoire of first-party games may not always entail purchases, highlighting the company’s interest in partnerships.
“We have a number of ways of looking at this,” Lempel stated. He went on to say that “in terms of great content, that’s where we’re focused.”
“We’ve done more M&A [mergers and acquisitions] in the past decade than we’ve ever done,” he told me. “We’re always looking to work with new partners, whether that’s somebody as an external provider … or working with a developer along the way and then acquiring them later.”
As an example of this method, Lempel noted Insomniac Games, which created Marvel’s Spider-Man brand for PlayStation. Insomniac was previously a Sony partner, developing games for the PlayStation platform, but it became more intertwined with Sony before the Japanese tech behemoth chose to buy the company entirely.
In its first 24 hours, the company’s Spider-Man 2 game sold more than 2.5 million copies, making it the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game in history.
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