Sony was forced to slash its PS5 sales forecast by millions of units due to market conditions.

In the current fiscal year, Sony expects to sell fewer PlayStation 5 systems than previously predicted. Due to continued component shortages, the company cut its expectations by millions of units.

Sony to surpass PS4 sales

Sony had earlier predicted that the PS5 would sell more than 14.8 million units by March 2022, surpassing the PS4’s sales in its second financial year on the market. The business no longer expects to be able to meet that level of demand, and now expects to sell 11.5 million units this year.

“Unfortunately,” said CFO Hiroki Totoki in a Q3 earnings call, “we have revised our FY21 unit sales forecast for PS5 hardware to 11.5 million units due to limitations on the supply of components – especially semiconductiors – and an increase in delivery times resulting from the disruption of the global distribution supply chain.”

Totoki went on to say that supply constraints are anticipated to persist: “Limitations on component supply are projected to persist moving forward, but we are continuing to make every effort to meet the great demand for PS5.”

Improvement

Totoki stated in an earnings call Q&A that the business hopes to “catch up” from the short-term impact of these shortages. He later stated, “[We are communicating, negotiating, and working closely with] our component-supply partner firms. We aim to make that happen, but in terms of [PS5], I believe it’s safe to say that supply disruptions in terms of components will continue to be a global issue due to distribution issues and other factors. As a result, we can’t estimate with certainty what the demand will be next year.”

Despite those problems, Totoki believes it is beneficial for the organization to maintain strong sales targets in the future.

Despite lower-than-expected financial results this fiscal year, PS5 has been a huge success. According to Sony, the PS5 has sold 17.3 million units as of December 3, 2021. While it hasn’t been able to keep pace with the PS4, the PS5 outsold the PS4 in its first year on the market and became the fastest-selling system in US history.