SONY TO PRODUCE MORE PS4 AMID PS5 SHORTAGE
Sony announces plans to produce a million more PS4s amid the shortage of PS5.
Sony has announced that it will continue to produce PlayStation 4 in large numbers throughout 2022. The announcement comes amid the ongoing shortage of its latest flagship console, PlayStation 5.
It was initially reported that Sony made the move to address the shortage of PS5, which it denied. The company has clarified that its plans to produce more PS4 were not to compensate for the lack of PS5 supply but to cover the increasing demand of the PS4 itself.
The PS5 production has been plagued by a persistent global semiconductor shortage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic despite its staggering sales number. As of September 2021, around 13 million PS5 units have been sold globally.
Semiconductor shortage
Sony said the shortage of PS5 is caused by the complexity of the PS5's design and the company's dependence on TSMC and AMD to build and design its chip.
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PC gamers are facing a similar problem. In response to the graphic card shortage, Nvidia has released older models, removed some of their newest RTX 30-series from the market, and replaced them with the RTX 20-series.
Although the chip shortage is not expected to end anytime soon, some companies are planning on investing in new manufacturing capacity in 2023. The scarcity may cause the end of the first-wave consoles and the GPU generations that were built before them.
Production continues
Sony has said that it would continue to produce both PS4 and PS5 amid the semiconductor shortages.
PlayStation 5 was launched in November 2020. It was the first gaming console to feature the top-of-the-line 8-core AMD Ryzen Zen 2 processor and run 4K games.
The PS4, meanwhile, though not as good and smooth as the PS5, can still run some 4K contents and modern games flawlessly. Moreover, PS4's resources are more affordable than its successor. As of now, PS4 sales have reached nearly 120 million units globally.
Despite Sony's effort to increase the supply of its consoles, the shortage is still present among the end-users. Several major retailers presently do not have both Playstation 4 or 5 in stock.
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More from Sony
The robust uptake of cloud gaming has become a key driver for the current gaming market. Its continuous growth is expected to be supported by the rapid 5G deployment and augmented reality (AR).
Sony's Game & Network Services segment is one of the company's leading growth factors. During the last quarter, it posted a 27.4 percent year-over-year increase in sales to $5.7 billion (Rp 81.83 trillion).
Since 2020, Sony has been focusing on acquiring more gaming companies to expand its gaming operations. Some of these include Bluepoint Games, Housemarque, and Firesprite.
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