Sony is preparing for a quieter year of PlayStation 5 hardware sales, and the reason is not a lack of demand for games. It is the cost and availability of memory.
In its latest financial results presentation, Sony says it expects a "decrease in unit sales" for PS5 hardware during FY26, the fiscal year running from April 2026 to March 2027. The company adds that its plan for the console will be shaped by memory supply.
"We plan to base our PS5 hardware sales in FY26 on the volume of memory we can procure at reasonable prices and we expect hardware profitability to be essentially the same as FY25."
That wording is unusually direct for a platform holder. Sony is not only forecasting fewer PS5 units, it is tying that forecast to whether it can buy enough memory at prices that still make sense for the business.
The pressure lands during a wider component crunch across consumer tech and gaming hardware. Memory and storage prices have been pushed upward by intense demand from generative AI infrastructure, and console makers are now dealing with the same supply chain squeeze that has already hit other devices. Earlier today, Nintendo raised Switch 2 prices in several major regions, with component costs part of the wider pricing backdrop.
Sony's own public hardware data shows how large the PS5 business already is. Sony Interactive Entertainment lists PS5 sell-in at more than 92.1 million units as of December 31, 2025, before the January to March quarter covered by the latest fiscal results. Even a managed slowdown affects one of the biggest active console install bases in gaming.
The hardware caution does not mean Sony expects its games business to shrink across the board. On the same results slide, the company forecasts an increase in first-party game sales for FY26, while expecting PS5 hardware profitability to remain essentially in line with FY25.
For anyone waiting on a PS5 price drop, the signal is not encouraging. Sony is telling investors that hardware volume will be paced by memory it can source at acceptable prices, which makes aggressive discounting harder to expect while component costs remain elevated.