Sony has an update on PlayStation 5 pre-orders, but it’s not what you are expecting

There was a rumour doing the rounds earlier this week that Sony was going to open up PlayStation 5 pre-orders by announcing the price and release date. But that turned out to be false and PlayStation global head of marketing Ed Lempel pointed out during an interview about the DualSense controller that Sony was making no announcements right now - neither the release date nor the price and they had nothing to do with the rumours.

Lempel mentioned that the company would announce when the pre-orders will happen and it won’t be at a moment’s notice - there is no need to run out and line-up anywhere.

“We will let you know when pre-order will happen. It’s not going to happen within minutes notice. We’re going to at some point let you know when you can pre-order a PlayStation 5, so please don’t feel like you have to run out and go line up anywhere,” Lempel said.

Sony wants to build as much hype as possible about the upcoming console, but not through confusion and chaos.

Price remains the biggest question as far as the upcoming PS5 reveal is concerned. And thus is it understandable that it might take time for pre-orders to go live because you obviously cannot open up pre-orders without telling people how much it costs.

Microsoft and Sony seem to be tied up in a game of sorts with both parties hoping to learn something about the other’s plans before making their own announcements.

Most people are expecting that these consoles, the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5, to be priced around $499 ( ₹37,388 approx) but there are some other determining factors here. For the PlayStation there is the all-digital and the disc drive editions and there should roughly be a $50 price difference between the two. For the Xbox, we are yet to hear about Project Lockhart which should be the less powerful console and be priced much lower.

According to reports, Sony is increasing its initial production run of the PS5 driven by a huge spike in gaming thanks to the Covid-19 lockdowns. Sony has its expectations raised high and is looking to make the best of an opportunity. But all of this will depend on how they ultimately price it.