If you weren’t one of the lucky ones to snag a next-gen console, then this won’t come as a surprise — the PlayStation 5 is completely sold out. In a recent interview with Russian news outlet TASS, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan discussed how difficult it is to track down a console and how Sony is dealing with the shortage.
When asked about how sales have been since the PlayStation 5’s release on November 12, Ryan gave a very honest answer. “Everything is sold. Absolutely everything is sold,” Ryan said. “I’ve spent much of the last year trying to be sure that we can generate enough demand for the product. And now in terms of my executive bandwidth, I’m spending a lot more time on trying to increase supply to meet that demand.”
Since the beginning of this year, COVID-19 has impacted nearly every aspect of daily life for many people across the world. For Sony, however, it didn’t stop them from getting PlayStation 5 consoles to players. Ryan admits that there might have been more consoles available for consumers, but not by much. For a time, Ryan says, Sony had difficulties beginning production since many factories shut down. Early production began remotely via camera and without employees present in factories.
What’s next for PlayStation 5
Ryan also admitted that he is less concerned with a “console war.” The almost infamous sales battle between Microsoft and Sony, and occasionally Nintendo depending on the generation, lead to many heated arguments both on and offline.
“For me, it’s great that there’s competition. I think it makes us work harder. It avoids us getting complacent. It’s great that the consumer has a choice. I think that’s wonderful. We’re happy and we’re proud with what we have.”
Perhaps the most intriguing thing Ryan said is how Sony is working on an answer to Xbox Game Pass. “There is actually news to come, but just not today,” Ryan said cryptically.
Sony has long had PlayStation Now, an adjacently similar system where players can stream and occasionally download games to play. While close, PlayStation Now doesn’t quite have the same appeal as the Xbox Game Pass. Moving forward, Sony will be focusing on quality over quantity on the PlayStation 5.
“We want to make the games bigger and better, and hopefully at some stage more persistent. So putting those into a subscription model on day one, for us, just doesn’t make any sense,” explains Ryan. “For others in a different situation, it might well make sense, but for us it doesn’t. We want to expand and grow our existing ecosystem, and putting new games into a subscription model just doesn’t sit with that.”
