The covid-19 pandemic has thrown a lot of plans around the world into chaos, from sports to travel, but one area it’s not impacting—not yet, anyway—is the upcoming release of the PlayStation 5.
Sony released its company-wide FY19 4th quarter earnings report today, and inside was an interesting section where the PlayStation group addressed the effects the pandemic and its associated lockdowns have had on manufacturing consoles.
While “there has been a slight impact on production of PS4 hardware due to issues in the component supply chain,” Sony says this is being offset by a “significantly increased” number of digital game sales.
When it comes to the PS5, which last year was announced as coming in the 2020 holiday season, Sony says:
Regarding the launch of PlayStation®5, although factors such as employees working from home and restrictions on international travel have presented some challenges in regards to part of the testing process and the qualification of production lines, development is progressing with the launch of the console scheduled for the 2020 holiday season. At this point in time major problems have not arisen in the game software development pipeline for Sony’s own first-party studios or its partners’ studios.
This is of course liable to change should the social and economic situation deteriorate in any of the major territories responsible for the release of the console (and its launch titles), but for now at least, amidst all the global disruption, it’s nice to know that at least the new PlayStation is still on track.