Simply put, they’re in high demand.
At this point in its life, the PS5 has sold more units than the PS4 had sold at the same time, and that was one of the highest selling consoles of all time. Production isn’t slow on the PS5, but rather, demand is high.
Devices that require a significant amount of microprocessors, such as a PS5, or graphics cards, etc., are limited by how fast those chips can be made. There are very few facilities capable of doing it, and the ones that can are all at capacity all the time. They take orders years in advance. You can’t just flip a switch and boost production on PS5s, because so many other things need time on those supply lines — even modern cars need a significant amount of microprocessors.
There’s an international shortage of processor chips and other hardware needed to make PS5s, partially due to the pandemic interrupting supply chains and causing backlogs at factories that make the parts, but also because a ton of people during the pandemic decided to invest in better home computers (either to farm cryptocurrency or to play video games at home since they were stuck indoors) and there’s a shortage of the chips needed to make PS5s as a result.
Likewise, there’s not a Sony PS5 factory. Instead, Sony has to rent out the use of a factory ahead of time for, say two weeks, and during those two weeks the factory will make PS5s. The problem is that if it turns out you sold out immediately, then you need to schedule another time in the future to make more PS5s, and you are at the mercy of the factory’s schedule for when they will have other openings available.
Sony would LOVE to make more PS5s and sell them all. It’s just that a perfect storm of problems is keeping that from happening.
Latest Answers