No PS5 units will be sold in Japanese stores on the console’s launch day next week, Sony Japan has confirmed.
In addition, the company isn’t planning any launch events due to ongoing concerns over the spread of COVID-19.
“While there are still concerns about the spread of coronavirus infection, we do not plan to hold events or sell PS5 at stores on the day of PS5 release in order to ensure the safety of customers, retailers, and staff”, the Japanese tech behemoth wrote in a new post on the Japanese PlayStation Blog (Google translated). This part of the blog post was also tweeted by Sony’s Shuhei Yosida just now.
「PS5発売日当日の店頭での催しやPS5の販売は予定しておりません。 今後も継続的にPS5の出荷を見込んでおります。次回の入荷情報および販売方法につきましては、各販売店様のお知らせをご確認ください。」
【重要なお知らせ】PlayStation®5 発売日のご購入について https://t.co/JfmY8wLiOG
— Shuhei Yoshida (@yosp) November 5, 2020
According to Sony, all of the reserved PS5 units for Japan have been completely sold out following high demand. As we don’t know how many units were initially made available for the Japanese market, however, we can’t draw conclusions from this statement. Last month, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan said that it managed to pre-sell as many PS5 consoles in the US within 12 hours as in the first 12 weeks of the PS4, quite the accomplishment. Earlier, Ryan also said that he believes that PS5 sales will surpass 7.5 million units in less than 5 month, thereby beating initial PS4 sales.
In the blog post, Sony mentions that on the PS5’s launch day next week, reservations for the console will be temporarily closed because the planned number of reservations has been reached. Sony advises to check retailers for the next batch of PS5 consoles.
The PS5 launches next week on November 12 in the US, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Korea. Other regions, including Europe, Middle East, South America, Asia and South Africa will have to wait until November 19.
Be sure to check back regularly as we'll be covering the PS5 and its launch games closer to launch.