According to Bloomberg, who talked to various employees and representatives of Sony, PlayStation 5 will have a limited supply for the first year of its release. The limited supply is a result of Sony’s struggle to source the costly parts that will be going into the machine and the recent outbreak of COVID-19. The COVID-19 outbreak also forced Sony to delay the current promotional projects they had for PlayStation 5, and their withdrawal from many public events which they were planning to promote PlayStation 5 along with more information on the exclusives that will be coming out alongside with the system.
Sony representatives did tell Bloomberg that COVID-19 did not heavily affect their production capacity and so far will still be releasing in the holidays of 2020, despite reports from DFC Intelligence, although they claimed that the supply will be limited in the best-case scenario. Although PlayStation 5 will be releasing on time, the system is most likely to be priced higher than the release of PS4. “I think both the PS5 and Xbox Series X may end up at US$450 even though they would lose money at that price,” said Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Capital. The jump in price is due to the scarcity of the parts that will be going into the PlayStation 5.
The technology jump with the PlayStation 5 will be much greater than the jump from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4. Both consoles are using new APUs from AMD to power the consoles and are switching its primary storage to SSDs instead of mechanical hard drives in an effort to boost graphical power with both consoles releasing with ray tracing and aiming to run 4k with 60fps. A large performance boost from the average 30fps the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 played at with only the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 pro capable of playing at 4k. The switch to SSDs instead of using the cheaper mechanical drives is designed to drop loading times dramatically down.