Sony says it will have more PS5 stock at launch than it did for PS4 in 2013

If you’ve been having trouble pre-ordering the PlayStation 5 over the past several hours, you might be in luck.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan promised that there will be more supply of the PlayStation 5 when it launches this holiday — November 12th in Canada and the U.S. and the 19th in other markets — than it had available for the PlayStation 4 at its launch in November 2013.

For context, around 2.1 million PlayStation 4 units were sold worldwide in the two weeks following its launch, with one million sold in the first day alone. At the time, this marked the “best launch in PlayStation history,” according to PlayStation.

However, the console was notoriously difficult to get in the few months following its launch, with Sony noting then that there was “incredibly strong” demand that continued to “overwhelm the supply worldwide.”

All of that is to say that it’s unclear exactly how much initial demand there will be for the PlayStation 5, and whether Sony will be able to keep up with it. For now, though, Ryan’s comments indicate that PlayStation is at least taking steps to ensure a comparatively larger supply of PS5 consoles this holiday.

In the interview, Ryan also addressed concerns surrounding PlayStation’s recently confirmed cross-gen strategy for certain first-party titles. Earlier this year, the company had said it “believes in generations,” indicating it would rather focus on developing titles exclusively for PS5 and leverage the console’s technical benefits than ensure they can run on current- and next-gen hardware. This was in response to Xbox’s confirmation that major exclusive titles like Halo Infinite would come to both Xbox Series X and Xbox One for a couple of years.

However, following its recent PlayStation 5 Showcase, Sony revealed that some first-party games, such as PS5 launch title Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales and 2021’s Horizon Forbidden West, will release on both PS4 and PS5.

According to Ryan, this strategy should please everyone. “No one should be disappointed,” Ryan told The Washington Post. “The PS5 versions of those games are built from the ground up to take advantage of the PS5 feature set, and we have an upgrade path for PS4 users to get the PS5 versions for free. It’s about people having choice. I’m really quite pleased about the situation.”

Other subjects covered in the interview include Sony’s recent push to adapt its games into other media (such as HBO’s The Last of Us show) and how Sony decided on a price for the PS5 earlier this year. You can read the Post‘s full feature here.