Just a marketing gimmick ?: Sony annoys fans with PS5 shortages

Without any real notice, Sony starts pre-orders for the Playstation 5 at night. Although many don't notice, the game console is sold out in no time. This supposedly has nothing to do with bottlenecks in production.

If you really want to annoy your customers, you have to do exactly the same as Sony: Although the company had promised to inform buyers early enough about the start date of the pre-orders for the Playstation 5, they went without notice shortly after the prices and the market launch were announced every advance warning in the middle of the night (Europe). Many fans didn't even notice, and when they did, it was often too late because the PS5 was sold out after a few minutes. Whether and when the sellers involved will again accept orders is still completely open. What the fans think say it on twitter very clearly.

As "IGN" reported, Sony's marketing boss had previously assured that such a situation would not take place. Fans shouldn't feel like they have to run off and stand in line, he said. Instead, on September 16, Sony only announced the prices of the two PS5 variants and their market launch on November 12 and 19 (Europe). Not a word was said at the start of pre-orders. But then the manufacturer tweeted that it would start in the course of September 17th at selected retailers and shortly afterwards GameStop started pre-orders, Best Buy and other retailers followed, in Germany in addition to Amazon, among others, Media Markt, Otto and Saturn.

Production problems?

Sony may not have wanted the chaos and simply lost control. But that wouldn't be an excuse for the pre-orders to end quickly – if the company was telling the truth in advance. Because "Bloomberg" reported on September 15 that the Japanese had major problems with chip production and could therefore only manufacture 15 instead of the planned 11 million consoles by the end of March 2021.

That would have explained the scarcity. But Sony let "Gameindustry.biz" know that there were no production problems and that the number targeted at the beginning of mass production had never been revised downwards. That would mean Sony hasn't been able to meet demand to begin with, or it might have enough consoles but isn't doing it to fuel the hype. The fans would probably not like that either.

. (tagsToTranslate) technology (t) Playstation (t) Sony (t) game consoles