Since Sony’s newest console the PlayStation 5 came out in November 2020, people have been doing their best to get one. The console has been out of stock and the only way to get one is to pay over $700 even up to $1000.

This is pretty wild, considering a full year after launch the PS5 is still nearly impossible to get your hands on. When New releases come out online they are gone within seconds and are often forced into pricey bundles adding hundreds to the asking price with extra games and controllers. It is impossible to know just how massive PS5 sales would be if there wasn’t a global supply shortage, and the same could be said for Xbox as well, making the current “race” more about who can produce the most units, rather than who can convince people to buy them.

Why is the PS5 so hard to find?

This is mostly due to the continued semiconductor shortage, used in the manufacturing of the PS5, there has been a global shortage affecting industries ranging from video games to medical equipment.

The numbers were not all great news for Sony, however. Sony saw declines in software year over year (down 6.6%) and a huge decrease in first-party software sales from last year (down 40.6%). Keep in mind this is just in this past quarter, so hits earlier in the year like Returnal or Ratchet and Clank are not counted. Those who have bought “launch window” first-party games like Spider-Man Miles Morales have likely stopped buying them en masse now, or PS4’s Last of Us Part 2 after winning all its GOTY awards last year.

Will there be Black Friday’s PS5 deals?

Black Friday is fast approaching, it lands on November 26, but does that mean we’re likely to see PS5 Black Friday deals then as well? It all depends on the stock situation, If retailers have PS5 consoles in stock, then we could see some pretty good deals, as online stores fight with each other to stand out during Black Friday. This won’t mean big price cuts for the PS5 but could result in some tempting bundles that pack in games and peripherals, which could end up saving you a decent amount of money anyway. However, if the stock remains low – or nonexistent – then the sad reality is that there won’t be any PS5 deals, and any that do go live over Black Friday will likely sell out extremely fast. If that happens, don’t be too dispirited, as the stock situation will eventually get better, and when that happens, PS5 deals should start coming thick and fast.

It’s just a very bizarre time in the gaming industry. This is poised to be the most successful console generation in history, and yet it is being heavily hamstrung by supply shortages on all fronts, making sales total a fraction of what they might otherwise be. On the software side, Covid-19 has mangled release dates and screwed up the calendar for most games. It’s unclear what this year might have looked like without the burden of the pandemic, but it’s clear that console gaming is alive and well and more popular than it’s ever been,  it may still be years for all this to get sorted out, and for you to be able to see something as seemingly simple as a PS5 on a store shelf.