Sony Working to Increase PS5 Supply in Time for the Holidays

Sony says it's increasing production of PlayStation 5, and is "working to bring forward more supply into the year-end holiday selling season."

During its latest earnings results, Sony explained that both software sales and gameplay engagement have dropped year-on-year – not a huge surprise given the huge increase in gaming during COVID-19 lockdowns.

"Taking this situation into account," Sony explained, "we intend to take action to increase user engagement in the second half of the fiscal year, during which major titles including first party software are scheduled to be released, primarily by increasing the supply of [PS5] hardware and promoting the new PlayStation Plus service."

Sony says it still expects to meet its forecast of 18 million units sold during this financial year, and is seeing positive signs for supply after lockdowns lifted in Shanghai, a major components production hub. As a result, Sony now believes it can bring forward production and sell many of those units during the holiday season, a boom-time for sales.

Sony has previously promised to ramp up production this year, but supplies have remained constrained, with new units selling out almost immediately. In a Q&A session, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said, "We want to produce more units as soon as possible."

Sony's been improving its hardware and services consistently since the launch of PS5, most recently adding an update to support 1440p monitors, and introducing the new PlayStation Stars loyalty service.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.