PS5: No Delay Because of COVID-19, Says Sony

A Sony spokesperson has said the COVID-19 outbreak should cause no impact on the launch date of PlayStation 5. Speaking to Bloomberg, the spokesperson said the company 'doesn’t see any notable impact' on the unspecified holiday 2020 release date set for PS5. We had already heard a Sony-retained PR agency make a similar statement, but this is the first time someone at Sony itself has made a comment. That sentiment has been echoed by GameStop CEO George Sherman, who earlier said that there has been 'no indication' of delays to either PS5 or Xbox Series X at this point. [ignvideo url="https://uk.ign.com/videos/ps5-xbox-series-x-no-delay-concerns-yet-next-gen-console-watch"] IGN's Jonathon Dornbush recently spoke to six video game indursty analysts who, despite caveats that we are dealing with unprecendented circumstances, came to a consensus that it's unlikely that next-gen consoles will be delayed. However, production shutdowns could still lead to reduced numbers of consoles being produced in time for launch, meaning shortages in the months after release. Sony has apparently been hurt in other ways by the outbreak, however. Coronavirus-related shutdowns of production facilities in China, Malaysia, and the UK has meant that Sony has had to revise earlier profit estimates, potentially even forcing it to delay an April earnings report. We'll likely hear a little more information when that earnings report does arrive, but we've already learned a lot more about PS5 in the last few weeks. We've seen the full PS5 specs, found out it will indeed run almost all 4,000 PS4 games in backwards compatibility mode, and learned that its install times should be much shorter than PS4. You can see how the two consoles stack up so far in our PS5 vs Xbox Series X comparison chart. [poilib element="accentDivider"]