That is the problem of the ship pile-up behind Ever Given. A minor mess. I don't think it affected Sony to any more than minor hassle otherwise we would have heard from Sony. As soon as the first pictures of the ship showed up in the news, gaming forums started to show up with "Sony/PS5 is doomed" messages" (interestingly, no mention at all of "XBoxX is doomed" despite using the same transportation means. I also think Sony uses NYK not Evergreen?).

So, as a hobby train thought, I wondered what really is blocked on the ship's 18000 containers. Unfortunately only insiders have access to the ship's manifest. What is going to happen with that cargo is very interesting in itself. Probably blocked for months while the lawsuits are flying front, left, right and center. Imagine you have delicate electronics on that ship and your containers are on the top of the deck - 50% humidity (salt water), no wind and tropical sun burning down on your metal box = kiss that electronics goodbye?

The crazy part is that as low as those game sales look at first glance they're selling more games than anyone has before. lol

How did you draw that conclusion? XSex will sell more than Xbone because Microsoft has done everything right this time. I think the gap will be much closer than last gen actually. And Microsoft is pushing gamepass because that's it's main platform now. The consoles are just a means to an end. The future of Microsoft is gamepass, not Xbox.

That is a bit less than what they paid for Insomniac, but they said this is for internal while still having plans for external colaborations (and possibly acquisition), and well perhaps that 183M isn't limited to one year expenses but like a 5 year plan. Still that would mean as you said some thousand employees so either new studios or additional teams on the existing ones and sure increase in headcount for some teams to keep the 3 year dev time.

True that, Sony certainly isn't sad that that small physical sales is still massive and the rest is just humungous compared to their previous results.

From what we have seem so far Series are selling about 50% of PS5, I don't know how much stock constrained Series are but PS5 certainly is seeling as much as is available. So the gap won't change significantly if the trend is kept.

The YoY increase of $183 Million is for this fiscal year only.

I'm leaning more towards an acquisition. Sony has been expanding their teams since 2018, so unless they're three team studios, I can't see them adding 1000's of employees through organic growth for this upcoming fiscal year. 

Why not give one additional studio to ND, SSM, Insomniac and other major studios, while also increasing the size of each team plus opening couple or more new studios?

Not every studio wants to be two teams. The ones that do have been expanding since 2018 (IE. Guerrilla and Santa Monica hiring/relocating) It's possible they open up a few studios but that wouldn't bring on thousands of employees. 

Despite PS5 tracking ahead of the PS4, I still say it will sell less globally. Sony's competition is stronger this time than during the PS4's first half. PS4 will probably slightly outsell the Game Boy+Game Boy Color when all is said and done.

Financially, PlayStation is killing it.

187M seems enough to only buy a small to medium studio unless this is the 187M expected cost only in 2021 and more on 2022 and forward.

Playstation made $25 billion in revenue for the fiscal year 2020.

I wonder if Apple/Amazon will try get into the console business, the market is just getting bigger. (Note FY2020 means Q2, Q3, Q4 last year + Q1 this year)