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Sony did it two days later that its American rival Microsoft released the Xbox Series.
Unlike Microsoft, which opted for a single global launch, Sony puts the console on sale in two stages: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Canada and Mexico, starting this Thursday.
The rest of the world, and in particular Europe, will have to wait until November 19. Due to the pandemic, purchases will be made online. Sony has warned that no consoles will be sold in stores on launch days.
At a store in Sydney, Australia, only a handful of customers who managed to pre-book online They came to pick up the console on Thursday morning, confirmed an AFP journalist.
“With COVID-19, I imagine that people didn’t want to crowd into stores“Commented Theo Pasialis, who went to get his PlayStation 5.” Also there were not enough for everyone.
Demand is announced high for the more homelike lifestyle imposed by the pandemic. The copies available for pre-order have been sold out in record time and analysts predict that it will be very difficult to get a new console before 2021.
Like its rival, the PlayStation 5 will be available in two versions: a “premium,” which Sony sells for $ 499, the same price as the Xbox Series X, and an equally powerful “digital edition,” but without a disc drive, at $ 399, 100 more than the Xbox Series S.
These digital versions, which only allow you to play downloaded games, they are a gold mine for the two manufacturers because it allows them to compensate the weakness of their margins in the sales of consoles. They can thus control game prices, eliminating manufacturing and distribution costs, while preventing resale in the second-hand market.
Repeat the success of the PS4
The consoles of the two giants have globally equivalent characteristics. Sony counts to differentiate itself with highly anticipated games like ‘Spider-man: Miles Morales’, ‘Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’ or ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’, some of which are not expected for several months.
These games are developed by studios bought by Sony, a way for the manufacturer to ensure the development of exclusive titles for your console and guarantee your profit on sales. The Japanese company has 14 studios.
Sony, whose video games account for about a third of sales, hopes to reap with this generation of consoles, its ninth in the history of video games, the same success as with the PlayStation 4, launched in 2013 and of which it sold twice as many copies as the Xbox One.
The Japanese company prevailed with the PS4, says Serkan Toto, an analyst at Kantan Games in Tokyo. “You’ll want to focus on the western market to make sure you keep the gap” with Microsofthe told AFP.
In recent years, Sony, in fact, has left the Japanese archipelago, where the market for console games, which has shrunk considerably, is dominated by Nintendo. Sony only sold 8% of its PS4s there.
It focused its strategy on the US market, the only territory where its competitor Microsoft is not lagging behind.. In 2016 it moved the PlayStation operations from Tokyo to California and unified its decision-making and production process, led by its American teams.
According to most analysts, Sony will again surpass its American rival in the number of consoles sold. However, in the long term, Microsoft could be on its heels thanks to its strategy focused on subscription video games and streaming.
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