November 2021 NPD: Minimal PS5 Stock Leads to Disappointing Hardware Sales

Feel really bad for all those kids who’d die for a PS5. The shortages will leave a lot of families disappointed at Christmas.

@Royalblues walmart has/had the oled switch for $350. Maybe still?

sorry but what is NPD?

Well, if stores would limit one console to a single address & credit card this would vastly reduce the issue…. Never mind, scalping is a different issue and those are still units sold for Sony.

The gap with microsoft is closing and there is not only stock to blame..No exclusives releasing around christmas was a big misstep..

Yeah, I don't see the chip shortage ending any time soon. This isn't really Sony's fault as they'd love to ramp up production to meet demand... but China's pandemic has screwed the world over in many aspects.

@Royalblues I think it'll be early 2023, at the absolute earliest before supply is back to normal. I used to think late 2022, but the xmas rush will prevent that. On the plus side, I've almost cleared my PS4 backlog (Only TLOU2 left, with LIS:TC and GOT on my wishlist) and I own plenty of PS4 games that deserve a replay.

heh , i finally got mine after waiting a year & still can’t believe it 😁

‘ Overall industry spend plunged 10 per cent year-over-year as a result, pulling in $6.3 billion in total.’

To be noted that’s comparing to the new gen launch year 😅

We keep hearing about more demand, but NL posted an article this morning with analyst numbers showing that PS5+XS combined sold only around half of what PS4+X1 sold in the month of November 2014 vs 2021, in the US.

I think that makes clear that the "increased demand" isn't really coming from the existing primary markets, but rather the consoles expanding into new markets globally. They keep making it sound like they had 20% more consoles available, but demand is so high they're getting bought as soon as available, but those numbers show the opposite. It looks like there were only half as many consoles in a given market, in this example the US as there were in 2014. All those other consoles were distributed to new markets around the world. It doesn't matter if there's 20% more made than PS4 if all of those are going to some new country PS4 wasn't sold in, if you're a PS gamer and competing with everyone over half the number of available consoles in your market than was available in 2014. Even if console demand SHRANK in the US, inventory would still be scarcer and more fought over by far, with those numbers. It's bleaker than they keep making it appear.

And if that number means PS5+XSS+XSX, we can bet most of that sales total came from Series S, that was the only one semi-readily available last month, so down to 1M from 2M, if the lions share of that went to the low end XB, Sony may have moved only a few hundred thousand total, if that in the US. And ironically it promotes a focus on lower-spec graphics in the future if the low spec systems (XSS/NSW) end up being the lions share of current market consoles sold. That'll have a huge impact on game development, along with the scarcity of PC GPUs.

@Fyz306903 I believe Intel expressly said 2023 at the absolute earliest....so my bet is later than that. Realistically by the time production is normal and these consoles are readily available, the generation will probably be on its way to ending without ever having really started. Either that or it becomes a 10+ year generation.

I think this profound change that this generation will never really be a generation will actually change future generations forever more and probably hasten the shift to PC-like release on console.

@OmegaStriver I still cringe at that idea. As a household of more than one gamer, it's not really beneficial to limit one per address. Two or more real customers are still two or more real customers regardless of where they live. Plus there's the people that know how to navigate the disastrous ordering systems and people that don't, so the ones that do end up doing the buying for friends and family that just can't manage the requirements for ordering. It's still one console per customer.

What they SHOULD do though, but the problem is it would cut retailers out, is one per valid PSN/XBL/NNID account WITH a gaming history to it until supply is stable. That means that existing customers get first pick over new customers, and means that locks it to truly one console per actual customer. Though normally that should apply only at launch. This is a once in a lifetime anomaly we're going years with lack of production...

@Royalblues Funny how the evil walmart starts looking like a good thing, once all other options go out of business... Even I've started buying there...

@Royalblues if you’re walmart plus members it’s easy.

or atleast it was , i don’t know how it is now . but when i found out what walmart plus did , it was super easy to get a ps5 when they went live .

@nomither6 I've been trying to get a spare XSX (don't tell @OmegaStriver!) after mine died - and was repaired in warranty by a lucky break that they showed my warranty as 2 extra weeks than the purchase date's anniversary - because I have too much money invested in software on that machine to lose it should it fail again) and signed up for W+ for that....it's.......not been fun. At first they announced when they were doing it, I'd line up, and the button never even became available before it was sold out. I assume there was maybe 2/10 of a second you had to refresh at just the right moment. Now they don't announce them and just shadow drop them. Better for avoiding bots, but the odds of landing on it at the right time are probably lower than hitting the lottery. They're really the last store left even shipping consoles....but it's darned near impossible to get them. I checked the stats on one of the scalper sellers and the stats show they've sold over 60,000 of them. Well....that explains a lot...that's just one seller. I don't think they're getting them all through scalper bots on Walmart. There's got to be some backdoor they're getting whole pallets from distribution. Someone inside. I imagine there's a whole side industry on the logistics side where shipments are getting sold as whole lots to businesses. Not even the fanciest scalper ring could get 60k units, and that's just XSX, not PS5, through random FedEx shipments from retailers. That's like 150 consoles a day. Even if they had 300 people in the ring, that means half of them getting a console every day for the past year. Even the bots can't get that lucky that often. I imagine the whole lot is sold off before the actual retail purchase time arrives.

But even if there weren't scalpers, those numbers of half the total available consoles (for November in the US) vs 2014 when demand was even lower...... it really explains just how bad it is.

@NEStalgia So, you don’t have a grandparent, uncle, aunt, brother, sister or friends address you could use for system 2?

You say they should use PSN IDs to limit scalper purchases…….lol, it’s not like you can create those for free.

FYI, I own 2 PS5s.

You can get around any restriction that is put in place, but you need to make it harder and more annoying for scalpers.

@NEStalgia Actually approximately 2.31m of 15.74m PS5’s were sold outside of traditional Market(USA, Europe and Japan).

Thats 14.7%.

The PS4 was 17.3% to the same markets.

The PS5 is selling at a faster rate than PS4, and a higher percentage of those sales are to core markets.

It also sells more software, has higher usage, more PS plus subscribers etc etc. By every metric Demand is significantly higher.

@OmegaStriver Honestly, I don't!

I don't disagree with your core premise at all, I just don't take to the whole "one per household" idea people tend to float (and honestly the scalpers are working either in rings of many buyers or through backdoors and buying whole inventories anyway...). It's kind of a rough-fit good idea that screws more real customers than scalpers. (aren't they all? )

Fortunately, I don't think the mfrs disagree with my concern either. It's either MS or PS, can't remember which, on their "invitation based" purchasing, they do have a limit of "one per order, 3 per 30 days" or something like that, so they're officially acknowledging the validity of demand for more than one per household. IMO, rightly so. It's a tough balancing act. There's many legit reasons why people might want to buy more than one directly, and many of them aren't doing it for resale. And the old school idea of "each house has one TV and the family shares the TV for entertainment all the time" is a bit obsolete, though that's how consoles used to work.

The PSN ID thing would work, obviously not just with a new free account created, there would have to be metrics involved to show a qualified ACTIVE account. That's not so different from what Sony tried to do with the US preorder invitational. They did use account metrics, but they did it weirdly and it was a nebulously worded limitation that sounded to me more like "we'll check the data to see if you're a profitable enough or socially connected enough user to benefit us in letting you have one." That was wrong. But it does prove they have the mentality, and capability of examining data on a per-account level to validate a "meets criteria" status. It shouldn't be "this person looks like an influencer so that's a win", it should be "yes this account appears to be valid and in active status" meaning, "actually plays games with a history of playing games." Regardless of if they're super ace players with platinums on every Fromsoft game and twitch streams or casual sucky players that only play Knack on easy mode periodically, it still shows they use their systems as real customers. We know they can tell at a macro level how an account is used, and if it's a fake account or not. Maybe not 100% accurate, but pretty darned reliable. When they run out of orders for all the "viable accounts" that qualify, then they can easily move back to normal retail for all the new and inactive customers. But at least the active and loyal customers get rewarded for their continued business ahead of the line.

Or just take infinite preorders and fulfill them in the order recieved. So the people that ordered last September get them before the people trying to buy them this Christmas, etc. There's a lot of other ways to do it rather than kind of forcing everyone into a sort of template. And it's data they have, which is a lot more useful and reliable and serves to reward customer loyalty first, so it's a win-win all around.

I definitely want to see a (much) better system in place in the future, because this one sucks. Though in the future I also think we won't be playing catch up for a year plus. This is just a strange time to be alive. I'm definitely with you overall...just that the address method, I think, screws over more real customers than scalpers. The scalpers are already using various end-runs around limit-1 order systems, I don't think the address thing would phase them much.

Edit: At least you're also part of the multiple console club and you won't have my hide for that!

@ChrisDeku That's good to hear, if so....but....I'd love to separate out those numbers from launch versus the past 6 months in terms of availability. Those Nov numbers for the US are bleak. HALF of 2014, and that's PS+XB combined! And since XSS is so much more available than the other two, it's probably 1/3 or worse for PS supply. Maybe PS is just prioritizing EU over US. Certainly not Japan, supply has been terrible there. Something happened to US inventory last month, and that doesn't mesh with the numbers of total sales. I'm wondering how much of the total distribution was from last year at launch.

I bought a series s for Christmas and I was so confused at how easy it was 😂😂

Missing literally nothing. Stop feeding fomo. Scalpers stop making profit. Care when there are actually ps5 exclusives. Simple.

@theMEGAniggle LOL, it's so true. We've almost gotten used to buying things being a long term struggle and commitment to fight the hordes to be able to buy a thing, not just this gen, Switch launch was like that, too, and not just electronics, food has become like that, too, that the idea of just deciding to buy something and doing it without weeks of planning and alternative fallback scenarios, seems almost alien!

@NEStalgia honestly haha! It's so backwards. The whole time I was thinking how and why can I buy a series S for £200, it feels almost illegal. I guess this is basic S&D economics playing out for us to see.

@Bleachedsmiles do you have a PS5?

I have ever saw some PS5 machine bundles at my local gameshop and the price was crazy (14,000,000 IDR) 😑

@theMEGAniggle yeah. Since June. Why?

@Bleachedsmiles what games you been playing?

@theMEGAniggle Currently playing through Rachet and clank and resident evil village. But getting sidetracked by spending most of my free team in dreams, trying to finish the game I'm making by Christmas.

@Bleachedsmiles how is dreams on ps5? I really want to dive back in but I’ve been waiting for a native app

Also you should check out Returnal, I’d be surprised to hear back bad reviews from anyone who’s played that game

@theMEGAniggle soon as it's on a decent sale I'll be picking up Returnal.

Tbh I'm not playing it on the ps5 I'm using my PS4 as I'm uncertain how well making games works with the dualsense when it was designed to work with the dualshock. It's probably fine...but I'm also paranoid my cloud save won't carry over or something will mess up (I've lost loads of progress before due to corrupted save)...when I'm so close to finishing a game I've been working on for about a year now (I got set back 3 months of work when my save corrupted). Soon as I have it finished I'll be installing on ps5 where I hear it shines the most noticeable in VR.

@Bleachedsmiles good, I’ll be looking forward to hearing what you think of it

That is just scary. Can’t imagine always fearing you’ll turn on your console just to see that “rebuilding database” screen and then boom corrupted save. I hope that doesn’t happen. You might as well plug your game name or profile name so we can check it out when you finished!

Do you already have the psvr or you waiting for the second one?

@theMEGAniggle My PSN name is same as here. Same on Xbox.
I already have psvr...playing dreams in vr isn't too stable on the base PS4. No problems with the pro. But you'll often get kicked out into 'cinema mode' if a scenes too ambitious for the base PS4. I'm currently trying to make my game work better in VR...but it's far from perfect.
Right now it's just as case of getting some logic figured out (basically learning 'variables' to allow save states so when you go back to a level you don't have to have the same conversation again ect)...boring stuff right now just to get it over the finish line.

I'll definitely be getting psvr2 at some point. I just can't see how they can announce it next year when the ps5 is still not physically on the shelves.

@Bleachedsmiles dope!

I always get so excited about playing things in vr, even traditional games. I hate having to use a tv or monitor so the concept of having the screen in my face is really exciting to me.

Ahh okay, I know it’s really in depth but wow that must have taken ages to learn and implement every time you needed to implement that feature. What type of game is it?

Yeah I feel you, but at the same time if they wait too long it’ll be left behind by the competitors. Feel like 2022 is the perfect time to announce. If they make it available when ps5 isn’t in its prime yet then this is good because by the time there are more ps5’s, I feel like the demand won’t outweigh the supply for the psvr2. But we shall see