Imagine this: you walk into the big store in your neighborhood, hoping to buy a PlayStation 5, and it’s just there. It’s on the shelf. You can pay for it, you can leave the store with it, and it is yours. There is no need to sit at your desk to update your browser tabs all day. It looks pretty good, right?
On November 12, 2020, Sony launched the PS5 in a handful of markets, with a global launch the following week. Four months later, remains almost impossible to get your hands on one – a scarcity you can attribute to a perfect storm of money changers, production hiccups and an unprecedented global pandemic. Worse still, the situation shows no signs of weakening and may even persist until the end of the summer.
“The main challenge here is the scarcity of semiconductors that is affecting basically everything in the world, from cars to computers and video cards to PS5s,” Mat Piscatella, executive director and video game consultant at NPD Group, told me about a call from Zoom recently. “It looks like it will be a challenge for a while, probably in the second or third quarter or even after, depending on a number of factors.”
While the Harvard Business Review detailed last month, the semiconductor / chip shortage is and is not a result of the pandemic. Last year, fires basically deactivated two large production plants in Japan: one that manufactures fiberglass (used in the construction of computer parts) and one that manufactures electronic products. The auto industry also played an important role. When the pandemic hit last spring, confining millions at home, automakers cut back on orders for almost all production parts, including chips, which are essential components in many modern cars. Then, as vehicle travel increased again at the end of the year, these same companies increased chip orders. And then there’s Donald Trump, who royally fucked things up kickstarting a reckless trade war, regulator the sale of semiconductors produced in the United States to companies based in China (which forced these companies to stock up), and direction the federal government will blacklist Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, based in China.
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In addition, as HBR points out, airfreight has seen significant restrictions in recent months, the result of a number of factors, including the need to ship covid-19 vaccines, the widespread decline in passenger travel (meaning that companies can ‘use these flights to send stock), and the February grounding of a Boeing fleet.
Now wrap all this in a global pandemic that has altered the supply chain in many ways to list. You can start to see how the production of the most anticipated game console on the market has been halted.
The PlayStation 5 uses a chip developed by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a semiconductor manufacturer based in California that produces graphics cards, processors and the like. (AMD did not respond to a request for comment from Kotaku.) Earlier this year, AMD CEO Lisa Su said CNBC that the company expects a chip production shortage until at least the first half of the year. How reported by Tom’s Hardware, Su said this during a conference call about AMD’s earnings in January.
“The production lines can only yield a few units per hour. An allocation of production lines that can build things like a new console is not infinite. Therefore, we have seen that in the past, every successful new console faces a shortage of supplies of one kind or another, usually in the first six months to a year. But this is because the demand always significantly exceeds the production capacity. Therefore, we would still reach capacity limits. Now, these chips are adding an extra layer of capacity challenge, ”said Piscatella. He further pointed out that the number of new consoles made now does not differ much from generations of previous consoles. The main contrast is that, normally, at this point in the cycle, you can point to some kind of increase in production. It is not the case this time. (Piscatella was unable to provide specific numbers as a result of data agreements between console manufacturers and NPD.)
But, hey, the White House is taking care of that. Last month, President Biden published an order to review the causes behind this semiconductor deficiency. The short version is that, pending the results of the review, this order would basically result in the production of more semiconductors in the United States in the domestic market. It remains to be seen whether this will mean anything. According search conducted by consulting firm McKinsey, it may take up to two years to set up a semiconductor factory, plus at least another year or so to actually increase production.
So, what does this mean for you and your potential PS5? That dream, where you can just go into your local Best Buy – or Target, or GameStop, or Walmart, or anywhere else – and buy a PS5 off the shelf? When is it going to happen?
Sony did not say. When asked to comment on when regular availability for the PS5 could happen – at least in the company’s estimate – a Sony representative said he would look into the matter.
Piscatella is a little more optimistic: “If nothing else goes wrong, then hopefully in August, September, we will start to see a little more stock for people”.
Now, let’s say you’re looking forward to a fully digital PS5 and, by chance, be lucky in a model with a disk drive in the meantime. (This also applies to those in a situation vice versa.) Your best bet, probably, is just to get the first model you find.
“I don’t know if people will be able to choose and choose [between models], especially in the next six months, ”said Piscatella. “If they are going to want one, they are just going to have to pick up whatever is available to them, because that is not going to give up anytime soon.”
In other words, the PS5, like all of us and everything, is up to the whims of 2020 Part II: 2021.
“Hopefully, sometime this year, they’ll be on a shelf somewhere and you can just pick one up,” said Piscatella. “But, you know, 2021. Chaos reigns. Everything is uncertain. “