Sony does not plan to ship 80 million PlayStation 5s this year

A simple transcription error has led to substantial inaccuracies in Sony's hardware production forecast.

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A user on Seeking Alpha has diligently transcribed Sony's recent Q1'22 earnings call to investors, and for the most part the transcription is accurate. However sometimes there's little mistypes and sometimes these errors can have big consequences. Case in point: According to the transcription, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki said there was "no change" to ship 80 million PS5s by FY23's end.

This was a simple error. Totoki said 18 million, not 80 million. The latter is simply impossible even without COVID-19 restrictions in place. Sony plans to ship 18 million PS5s through FY23, which is the single largest shipment target in PlayStation console history.

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If Sony is able to hit its lofty shipment target, PS5 shipments would hit 37.3 million by March 2023 (Sony has shipped 2.4 million PS5s in FY23 so far, leaving 15.6 million consoles left). That's less than half of the 80 million mark that was previously reported...and it is still less than the highest point set by the PS4.

"At this point in time, we have made no change to our 18 million unit sales forecast for PS5 hardware in FY22, but since we are seeing a recovery from the impact of the lockdown in Shanghai and a significant improvement in the supply of components, we are working to bring-forward more supply into the year-end holiday selling season," Totoki said in the earnings report.