- Sony and Microsoft are struggling to meet overwhelming demand amid supply chain disruptions;
- In Brazil, the game market grew 140% in 2020 compared to 2019.
Latin America‘s gamers that have been trying to buy the newest Sony‘s PlayStation 5 and Microsoft‘s Xbox Series will have to wait until at least the second half of 2021 to get them. Due to social distancing period and the stoppages at the factories, the production chain has not managed to keep up with the high demand.
According to O Estado de São Paulo’s Broadcast column, in the case of PS5 there was a priority distribution to large retailers, and the products are only reaching specialized in electronic games retailers now. Otherwise, Xbox Series is still limited to large retailers chain.
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In Brazil, new consoles inventories should only be normalized at the end of the year, according to O Estado de São Paulo. In Argentina, Lisa Su, AMD’s CEO, the processor firm company, told El Cronista that the consoles manufacture are at risk due to the pandemic, and estimates that there will be a shortage in Argentina until the second half of 2021.
“We already had some limitations at the end of the year. That being said, we are receiving great support from our manufacturing partners. The industry needs to increase overall capacity levels. We will see some tension in the first few months of the year,” she said to El Cronista.
Overwhelming gaming demand
While Sony and Microsoft are struggling to meet overwhelming demand amid supply chain disruptions, Nintendo raised its forecast for sales of its Switch game console for the entire fiscal year to 26.5 million units, from 24 million previously, after a positive ending in 2020 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
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The Kyoto-based company said it sold 24.1 million units of hardware in the first nine months of the fiscal year, which ends in March 2021 – more than the previous year’s forecast – representing 16.8 million units of the Switch 7.3 million of the Switch Lite portable version.
In Brazil, the game market grew 140% in 2020 compared to 2019. A Visa survey showed that transactions made on platforms and consoles more than doubled in 2020.
For those who can’t buy a console, the mobile gaming is an option. According to The Verge, Among Us was the most downloaded mobile game worldwide in 2020. In November alone, more than half a billion people played it.
