Sony announced that it will continue to sell PS4 in 2022 despite initially planning to discontinue production by the end of 2021.
Sony has allegedly amped up production of PS4 further to offset potential revenue losses due to shortages in PS5 sales.
So why not make more PS5s instead?
PS5 requires significantly more hardware than its predecessor and with a global chip shortage, the gaming industry has been severely hit by supply chain issues.
This has limited Sony’s ability to produce the PS5 consoles and meet demand.
Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s chief financial officer elaborated on this issue when the sales of the first quarter of 2021 did not meet expectations, “Worldwide, there is a disruption in logistics, and mainly semiconductor device supply is being constrained, and this is having a larger impact [than expected]”.
Moreover, the supply chain conditions haven’t seen much improvement in 2022.
Sony has reduced its production outlook from 16 million units of PS5 to 15 million in anticipation of further manufacturing difficulties in 2022.