The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has been a massive obstruction to the production of many, many different industries. While the most obvious tolls have been taken on the healthcare industries and food outlets, the gaming industry has also been among those that have been highly impacted.
One of the primary reasons for this is the vital need to quarantine and social distance. In doing so, a high multitude of companies (nearly all of them, really) have implemented work-from-home policies to clear their offices out and drastically lower the chance of spreading the COVID-19 virus.
Unfortunately, working from home can greatly impact productivity on a number of levels. It becomes more important for workers to be self-motivated, and even more so, requires them to have access to full equipment and support. When one works in an office with their coworkers directly next to them, collaboration is incredibly simple, but when everyone is working from miles away, these sorts of needs are much more difficult to meet.
Sony says the PS5 release shouldn't be affected by the coronavirus https://t.co/Jglh5Ue7qf pic.twitter.com/eUTddBvMFU
— GameSpot (@GameSpot) March 27, 2020
Sony, however, insists that they won’t be joining the masses of companies that are having to push back dates due to this impact on production. While the team certainly admits to suffering a loss of profit and productivity as a result of the pandemic, they seem resolute in staying on schedule as predicted.
That doesn’t mean they aren’t staying on their toes, of course. Sony is incredibly wary of any possible upcoming issues and impacts on productivity that the virus could present. They had the following to say in a statement released earlier today:
“Although no issues have emerged so far, Sony is carefully monitoring the risk of delays in production schedules for game software titles at both its first-party studios and partner studios, primarily in Europe and the U.S..”
It’s more important now than ever for Sony to stay on task and ensure that their next-generation console is released on time. Due to the current release window, Sony will once again be in direct competition with rival producers at Microsoft, who are releasing their next-generation Xbox console around the same time. As of now, Xbox hasn’t mentioned any sort of delay to their console’s productivity, which only provides a great incentive for Sony to ensure their console releases at the proper time.
The consequences of delaying the release of the PlayStation 5 would be immense. There’s a chance that it could end up making an incredibly massive impact on the sales of the system in the long term, as many players end up picking between Xbox or PlayStation rather than picking up both systems. If the PlayStation 5 is released a significant amount of time after the new Xbox, there’s a high chance that consumers will have already picked up an Xbox rather than wait.
