PlayStation 5 Digital Edition Possibly Has Less Stocks Than Standard Edition

With pre-orders for the PlayStation 5 selling fast since they opened, reports of the Digital Edition with no disc drive selling faster also spread.

Despite the huge demand for the disc-less Digital Edition, reports came in that there were far fewer stocks of these to go around compared to the standard edition PS5 with a disc drive. Eurogamer has reported that these accounts are accurate.

One major retailer in the U.K. said that their company stock allocation had been around 25 percent Digital Edition compared to 75 percent for the regular PS5 but numbers may vary from store to store.

A poll conducted by Ars Technica for GameStop stores in the U.S. found a similar situation with as low as 13 percent to only as high as 33 percent of the Digital Edition available or an average of 25 percent stock altogether.

In its marketing efforts, Sony has never cautioned consumers that it might be harder to secure the Digital Edition of its consoles, it has simply been presented as one of two options, and the cheaper option since no disc drive is present.

Priced at $399, a full $100 cheaper than the standard edition, it’s easy to see why the Digital Edition is so appealing. No disc drive without sacrificing any of the core PS5’s power is the big lure although some have pointed out that the markdown will likely be made up by the cost of buying digital software at full whack.

PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan has refused to disclose the ratio on the availability of the standard edition PlayStation 5 compared to the digital edition. "We cannot give specific information on numbers, but we can say that we plan to produce the necessary number of units to meet the demand for that model type,” Ryan said.

"However, we've never produced two different console models at the same time before so deciding on the right number and the right ratio is very hard to know. We are doing our best to predict demand," he added.

There may be no clear answer as to what the proper ratio should be between the two editions of the coming console. Keeping the ratio of Digital Editions low means some customers who wanted a Digital Edition may end up settling for the more expensive $499 version as a result.

After apologizing for the chaotic way that pre-orders were handled last week, Sony doesn’t need production issues for a console that many have been waiting for since it was initially announced.