PS5 sales have surpassed 4.5 million units and Sony aims to ship at least 3 million additional units before March 31, 2021.
Sony just published its most recent quarterly financial results (Q3 FY2020), and as of December 31st, the company managed to ship 4.5 million PS5 units. For reference, this number is on par with the number of PS4 units that shipped during its launch quarter, back in 2013.
According to Sony, it’s aiming to meet the demand for its next-gen console, and as such, but also to at least match PS4 shipments when launch dates aligned, it wants to ship a minimum of 3 million additional PS5 consoles in its current financial quarter (which runs through March 31, 2021). In order to achieve this goal, production for the console needs to be somewhat increased.
Interesting to note is that Sony has been selling its PS5 console at a loss as the retail price of the console is below its manufacturing cost at this point. In retrospect, the PlayStation 4 was also initially sold at a loss, and as pointed out by industry analyst Daniel Ahmad, it took Sony several months to make it profitable.
The PS5 launched globally back in November of last year. The console instantly sold out worldwide and due to high demand and supply constraints, consumers have been hard-pressed to actually get their hands on Sony’s next-gen console.
We reviewed the PlayStation 5 back upon launch, and also praised its next-gen features later on, including the all-new DualSense controller.
I would say that the past-gen consoles have already been delivering quite the audiovisual experience and that there’s only so much you can do to further improve it. Yes, visuals are more crisp and fluid than ever before, but you’re getting to the point where it will be hard to increase it by a substantial amount. Ruling out audio and visuals, the question is how you can increase the immersion that a gaming console offers even further? The answer to that question might very well be, haptics.
