Are We Getting Consoles This Year?

Today we have a press conference scheduled for the Sony Playstation 5, where in theory we are supposed to be getting the price it will be launching at as well as pre-orders opening. I say supposedly, because this is not the first time we have heard rumors through 4Chan sources stating that a price announce and pre-order are coming. Right now it feels like both Microsoft and Sony are playing an intricate bluff, with neither wanting to show their cards before the other. I feel like this is largely pointless given that to me Microsoft and Sony are pursuing two different strategies for this general.

It feels like Sony is very much setting up for the traditional console experience of wanting to push total units sold and with that total volume of software sold. Microsoft on the other hand seems to be rolling out a significantly more service based approach with its multiple tiers of product offerings in the form of the Xbox Series X, the rumored Lockhart, XCloud for those without devices and on all platforms the extremely strong offering that is Xbox Game Pass. Microsoft appears to care more about getting that monthly subscription from you and providing varied entry points to their ecosystem than they really do about “pushing iron”. It makes sense given that Microsoft has been shifting to service based solutions on the business side for years.

While we have played this game of cat and mouse on console reveals and the dates associated with them… I have to admit there have been a few seeds of doubt planted in my head. We know both consoles exist and are preparing to launch, but I do wonder if maybe the delaying tactics are not due to price competition but instead due to the fact that they are about to announce delays in shipping the hardware due to the ever present complications of Covid-19. No one wants to deliver that news to a public that has likely built up some seriously toxic expectations surrounding the ability to have a shiny new console sitting under their tree come Christmas morning.

With that I decided to do a bit of a thought experiment to determine how late we are on this announcement. I decided to mine available data through some careful google searching and figure out the key dates associated with the last two generations of consoles.

• Xbox 360
  • Date Pre-Orders Opened Officially – 8/18/2005
  • Date Console Launched – 11/22/2005
• PlayStation 3
  • Date Pre-Orders Opened Officially – 10/10/2006
  • Date Console Launched – 11/17/2006
• PlayStation 4
  • Date Pre-Orders Opened Officially – 6/11/2013
  • Date Console Launched – 11/15/2013
• Xbox One
  • Date Pre-Orders Opened Officially – 6/10/2013
  • Date Console Launched – 11/22/2013

So what can we take away from this. Firstly I think it is pretty clear when the launch window is going to be for new consoles. I would predict the viable dates for launch would be either 11/10/2020 or 11/17/2020 with myself personally leaning on that second date. Essentially an early November launch is critical because that first shipment of consoles is going to sell through in its entirety and retailers will be clamoring for a second shipment before Christmas. Given the reality of logistics that means early November is key so they can send shipment number two early in December.

With a target launch window, we go back to the problem that we currently have that pre-orders have yet to begin. We are very much not following the pattern experienced with the most recent generation. In that case both announced price of console and began pre-orders at E3 2013. We are looking to be setting up for something more akin to that of the 2005/2006 360 and PS3 launch. In both cases it was a Christmas plagued by console shortages that were not remedied until the second quarter of the following year.

If there are no delays and we don’t get an announcement pushing back the launch to first quarter of 2021, we are going to experience severe shortages of consoles for this holiday season. I feel like that is still a significant “if” because it seems like the clock is ticking on what would be a viable launch strategy. That said we are living in a different world than we were in 2013, with more and more things being handled digitally. Game Stop is not the juggernaut that it once was and Best Buy is seemingly struggling as well, so I have a feeling this is going to be the generation where the vast majority of console units are purchased online and drop shipped to the waiting hands of gamers.

That said this is also shaping up to be a console generation plagued by bots and scalpers. Right now we are dealing with constant shortages of the Nintendo Switch, a console that three years ago because each new shipment gets gobbled up by resellers. I expect that to largely be the norm going into this console generation, in that you will be fighting against an army of cleverly scripted bots that are trying to snag your console and sell back to you at a 50% mark up. So even if the consoles do in fact launch this year, it is highly unlikely that most of you reading this post are going to be playing with it for a few quarters.

Right now we roughly thirteen weeks away from a possible launch window for these consoles, and the clock is ticking. I personally have been prepped to put in my PlayStation 5 pre-order as soon as they open, because I figure I will have a day at most window of being able to secure one. I have a bunch of Discover cash back bonus sitting there waiting to hopefully blunt whatever the launch price ends up being. I hope the announcement today does in fact signal the opening of pre-orders, but there has been some significant messaging floating around from Sony trying to blunt the expectations, which leads me to personally believe that we are not going to get a price or an official launch window. Which leads me back to the original title of this post, are we in fact actually getting consoles this year?