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Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 5 video game console went on sale Thursday, a key test of the Japanese company’s ability to maintain its biggest growth engine during the gaming boom of the coronavirus era.
The new PlayStation is Sony’s most important device since the Walkman, and it goes head-to-head with Microsoft Corp.’s next-generation Xbox during the holidays. The PlayStation 5 is anchored in the new Spider-Man game. Both consoles have posted solid sales since initial orders began in September, which depleted supplies.
The $ 500 PlayStation 5, a version without an optical drive for $ 100 less, marks a watershed moment for a company that was once synonymous with Walkman music players and Trinitron televisions. It is Sony’s first proper new console since 2013. Its predecessor, the PlayStation 4, sold 113 million units and made games the most important part of Sony’s business.
Bloomberg reviewed the product for two weeks and found that the most impressive aspect of the device was not the striking design or the powerful innards, but the controller, which added a whole new dimension to the game. It can, among other things, produce a subtle range of vibrations that simulate different tactile sensations. (Microsoft’s Xbox Series X, on the other hand, lacks must-have games.)
The PlayStation 5 won’t be easy to find in stores this year. Sony asked retailers to limit initial sales to customers with pre-orders. The PS5’s resale values on the black market have already soared to $ 871, outpacing the Xbox, according to researchers. The biggest test comes next year, when Microsoft and Sony will try to reach beyond early adopters.
“As the core of the group, Sony must make the PlayStation 5 a success,” said Atsushi Osanai, a professor at Waseda Business School. “It is the responsibility of the unit to become a source of income for the good of all stakeholders.”
Sony has a lot at stake on the console, even more than the previous one, in part because virus crashes have ushered millions into large-screen console games. Sony, Microsoft, and Animal Crossing developer Nintendo Co. have become a key player in the so-called rally of social media and online entertainment actions.
That has deepened Sony’s reliance on games, particularly as the pandemic hits its smartphone and film sensor business. Over the course of the summer, Sony saw record additions to its PlayStation Plus subscription service, required for multi-game player. During the April-September period, the PlayStation business accounted for more than 40% of Sony’s operating profit, the company’s data showed. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Masahiro Wakasugi said that PlayStation 5 should start a new round of growth.
For the product’s debut on Thursday, the company is pledging one of its biggest entertainment properties: a new game starring the superhero from the Sony-produced movie franchise Spider-Man. The game, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, is a semi-sequel to the 2018 blockbuster, both of which received critical acclaim. The new game strives to be culturally relevant (though not overtly political). It features a black hero, a diverse cast of supporting characters, and a Manhattan version that includes a giant Black Lives Matter poster.
Now that the two new consoles are available, Sony and Microsoft have to resolve supply bottlenecks that persist due to the pandemic. The Japanese company had struggled to ramp up production even weeks before launch, prompting the decision to ship consoles to the US by air, an expensive option for a device already selling as a loss leader. In Japan, local retailers complained that the amounts allocated to them are far from sufficient, forcing Sony to resort to a lottery system to distribute available units.
Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said in a private conference call with analysts last month that the PlayStation 5 was facing production and logistics bottlenecks. He told attendees that Sony would have announced a bolder sales target for the device’s first fiscal year if the company had been able to keep up with demand, several people who joined the call said. The Japanese company has said it would sell more than 7.6 million units, the amount that its predecessor sold in its first fiscal year, by the end of March 2021.
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