Bloomberg: PS5 Digital Edition pricing could dip below $400

We’re only a day or so away from Sony’s next PlayStation 5 event where we hope to get a confirmed price / launch date for the new console, but the rumors are still coming in. After reporting in July that Sony would respond to the coronavirus pandemic by boosting PS5 manufacturing to make as many as 10 million units by the end of this calendar year, now Bloomberg is citing sources who say that company has reduced estimates to 11 million units by March 2021 — four million fewer than it previously planned.

The rumored culprit behind the difference is in the console’s chipset, which have yields that Bloomberg states are “improving” but have been unstable, and ran as low as 50 percent. If you don’t have the CPUs to put inside those massive cases, then even a robotic assembly system can’t help more PS5s in time for the holidays.

If you can find a PlayStation 5 on the shelf — or in your email via a Sony-delivered pre-order invite — then the good news is that it might be less expensive than anticipated. The business paper cites analyst Masahiro Wakasugi as targeting a price as low as $450 for the disc-equipped PS5 and sub-$400 for the all-digital edition, which would compare nicely to Microsoft’s Xbox Series lineup that hits $499 for the Series X and $299 for a 1440p-ready Series S.

Update (9/15 6 PM): In a statement to GamesIndustry.biz, Sony pushed back against the production capacity elements of the story, saying “While we do not release details related to manufacturing, the information provided by Bloomberg is false. We have not changed the production number for PlayStation 5 since the start of mass production.”