It’s been 5 days since Sony Interactive Entertainment’s launch date and price reveal of its upcoming PlayStation 5. So, what about the PS5 PH pre-orders?
The console has been selling out across all stores in the U.S, Australia since its announcement of the pre-orders a day after the PS5 Showcase digital event. A promise that Eric Lempel, Sony’s Senior Vice President of PlayStation Worldwide Marketing, broke when he said they will give people ‘advance’ notice about the pre-orders. Instead, there were no clear instructions from Sony to the retails on when pre-orders start. A lack of communication, per se.
It wasn’t also made clear by Sony as to why the launch dates were separated as they have solely focused on specific countries to launch the console 7 days early than the rest of the world – November 12 and November 19 respectively.
Now, the biggest question would be for us, Filipinos, is: when will the pre-orders start in the Philippines? Sony Interactive Entertainment Singapore (SIES), or PlayStation Asia, has been silent about any announcements on the exact standard retail price of the console and the pre-order dates.
Upon digging more details from our media friends in Singapore, Geek Culture reported that they will be low at stocks for the PS5 launch on November 19. Stating that across the entire country, retailers will only have “as much as 200 units across the board” according to the article from the Singaporean media outlet.
They also got a press release stating that the PS5 is going to be priced at S$729 (Standard Edition) and S$599 (Digital Edition). That’s Php. 25,931.47 and Php. 21,307.20 respectively. Knowing there are import tax and shipping to consider, the prices can be from Php. 27,000 to Php. 30,000 for the standard PS5 edition.
If that’s how low the units are allocated to the main Southeast Asia country, knowing they have a strong install base of PlayStation owners, then most likely we won’t be able to get our pre-orders started anytime soon in the Philippines.
DataBlitz sent out an e-mail to those who signed up for PS5 updates via their e-commerce website. According to the e-mail from the Philippine retailer, “no official pricing and release date has yet been announced for the Philippine market.” It continues with “in compliance with Sony Asia’s guidelines for us not to make any announcements until we receive official word from them on the release details (pricing, availability, pre-order, etc.) for our own local market, we continue at this time to be in close coordination with Sony Asia to hopefully, bring you our local market’s release details soon.”
This means PlayStation Asia definitely has plans to open the pre-orders in the country, but not until they get an official word of how many units they can allocate for the country including those units to be given “free” to influencers like Alodia Gosiengfiao and the infamous PS4 “unboxer” Matteo Guidicelli.
We also have to understand that the world is under a global pandemic due to Covid-19, and this has drastically affected the production of the PS5.
Until PlayStation Asia gives out any announcements, we Filipinos might get the PS5 hopefully before the end of the year or even on November 19 if Sony can meet the high demand. Until then, there’s a slim chance of us getting a hold of the console.