According to a newlyrevealed official documentfrom Sony concerning their planned IR (investor relations) meetings, the company will reveal their fiscal year 2019 earnings on May 13th and hold a corporate strategy meeting on May 19th. Both events will be held via live webcast and their Sony IR Day will not be held this year, due to the dangers of COVID-19.
While a PS5 reveal is possible during the strategy meeting, it’s rather unlikely since the meetings have almost always centered around reaffirming their general brand strategy and how well each of their business segments are performing. So we’ll definitely find out more about the Playstation brand’s overall financial performance and goals but nothing in the specifics.
It’s more likely we’ll get details about the PS5 through the fiscal year earnings report, but not in terms of the next-gen console’s specs or design. Most likely Sonywill instead focuson PS5 projections compared to PS4 sales in 2020, the remaining life the PS4 will have alongside PS5, production costs, and other topics. Normally it’d be possible to glean more information from investor’s questions but it seems that won’t be possible due to the livestreaming nature of the event.
While Sony stated that the COVID-19 pandemic wouldn’t affectthe release datefor PS5, it will have an effect on the quantity of systems available until next year. According to thecompany’s assembly partners, Sony would be considering five to six million units until March 2021, which is nearly two million units less than PS4’s sales during its first quarter of launch.
Furthermore, according to a reportfrom Bloomberg, the pandemic has so severely affected Sony’s promotional plans for PS5 that they were forced to revealDualSense, the new PS5 controller, in an unfamiliar way to avoid possible leaks by the developers who’ve already received the controllers.
