A massive container ship named the Ever Given has been stuck for several days in the Suez Canal, a trade route crucial to international trade. While it has been known that this accident will have a significant impact on the transport of goods to and from Asia and Europe, it now looks like this accident will also directly affect the already struggling supply of PlayStation 5s to the world.
The Suez Canal, located in Egypt, was built between 1859-1869 as a faster alternative for trade between Asia and Europe than having to travel around the bottom of Africa. While beneficial to international trade, the route was primarily built using forced labor of local Egyptians and has been the subject of several battles, one of which was depicted in Battlefield 1, cumulatively resulting an estimated death toll in the millions.
As first reported by Business Insider, finished consumer electronics like the PS5 are primarily distributed from the Asian factories where they are manufactured by ship. The Suez Canal hosts roughly 10% of all global trade and experts are estimating that the delays caused by the stuck ship could be felt for months, as delivery delays also mean delays on when ships can return to port to pick up more goods.
This shipping delay, combined with a global shortage of semiconductor chips used in the PS5 and Xbox Series consoles means that getting one of the new consoles is going to become even harder for the foreseeable future. The semiconductor shortage is affecting more than just game consoles, but the manufacture of everything from Apple’s iPhones to Ford’s F-150 pickup trucks.
United States President Joseph Biden announced an investigation of the semiconductor shortage last month. That 100-day investigation into the cause of the shortage is still underway, but Business Insider reports that one key factor is a global overreliance on the small handful of Asia-based companies that produce all of the world’s semiconductors.
While it seems that stock of the PS5 will certainly be constrained for foreseeable future, PS5s do still make online appearances at stores like GameStop and Target at least once or twice every month. The final obstacle to getting a PS5 then becomes beating out bots programmed to instantly clear out a site’s stock in order to resell them on sites like eBay at exorbitant markups. But it isn’t impossible, and eventually PS5s will become easy to obtain, it is only a matter of time.
Source: Wikipedia, Business Insider