nah, this pandemic is pretty much a dream come true scenario for certain businesses. Sony is practically milking every remaining ounce left of the PS4. whatever leftover parts they have for the PS4 pretty much came to life and commands a certain price and demand rather than it depreciating. it's not because Sony can't produce but rather Sony choose to hold production as they see the resurgence of the the PS4 in the market. it's more like the PS4 is in fashion again.
Pandemic is only a dream if you can get the hardware out to people because software is where you make the money and the PS5 is the trojan horse for it. That's why they can afford to sell it without a profit or even a loss initially and be back in profit after the user buys a game. It was the perfect storm for the Switch because its using older components so no shortages and its mid cycle so the assembly line would've been going brrrrrr. That in combination with software like Pokemon and Animal Crossing was the perfect dream scenario.
Sony has been winding down production of the PS4. PS4 Pro got killed a while ago and If you check their quarterly PS4 sales have been trending down with no price cut. They were ready to stop production.
Halting PS5s to produce PS4 is going backwards. PS5 games cost more than PS4 games so why would Sony want to make less money. PS4 games work on PS5 so PS5 has a bigger library because it can play both PS4 and PS5 games.
Then you have exclusive titles and PSVR2 coming which requires the PS5 so why would Sony hold back. They want the PS5 in as much hands as possible so that PS5 exclusive games like Ratchet and Clank and Returnal and future titles have a bigger install base. As for PSVR2, it breaks the cost because buying a PS5 and PSVR2 at the same time will probably be $900 so you want PS5 in households before PSVR2 hits.
that's what I meant. why is it easy to reproduce or manufacture the PS4 if they can already make the PS5? it's not like there weren't any PS5s that got released. the fact that they released a few PS5, is already a testament that they are in production of it. then suddenly nothing and they blamed supply chain while reproducing the PS4s without any issues. I don't believe those PS4s were just sitting in storage to meet the demand for PS5s.
They didn't release a few PS5's. PS5 is the fastest selling console in history. It beat the PS4 which had the previous record.
Demand is outstripping supply.
that's the thing. typically, Sony would stack up a lot of units before the initial launch and we seldom get shortages. and it is the first time that we are seeing Sony doing a soft launch. regarding the tech, this would have been true if Microsoft with their Xbox releases also suffered the same shortages or supply issues. they pretty much have the same specs as that of the PS5. considering the Xbox series X and S are readily available and in massive supply, makes you think about such excuse from Sony. I'm looking at it from the businessman's point of view of hoarding or keeping everything on hold considering the sudden surge of demand for the previous product the seem to have lost value is now costing back to more profit. of course, that is difficult to prove but considering the circumstances, it is a possibility.
Series X is not readily available. Readily available means seeing it in store shelves and being able to order one online anytime from Amazon. Only Series S is readily available in Europe because Europe is PlayStation land. Maybe Asia too but not sure.
The chip shortages is real. Pandemic makes things worse and console manufacturers now have to compete with car manufacturers because cars are now using the same semi-conductor components. Tesla even has AMD APUs in their new cars which means less for consoles.
Sony and Microsoft get their chips from AMD who gets it fabricated from TSMC. All of them have said there are shortages which will go on for a while so no other choice but to release old stuff. Nvidia does this all the time since they have to deal with cryptominers as well.
