Fewer games, less playing time, less income: Sony’s PlayStation division reports declining sales for the 2nd quarter.
Originally, the Japanese Sony group had made the PlayStation 5 production to increase measurablyto get ahead of the wave in view of continued demand. Not much of that can be seen in the figures for the first financial quarter (April to June) published this morning.
While PlayStation sales are only down a few percentage points year-on-year, there is a ‘significant decrease’ in profits, which will also impact full-year 2022/23 results.
The reasons:
In total, 2.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles were shipped. That’s 400,000 more than between January and March, but little more than a year ago, when 2.3 million cartons left the factories. For comparison: In the Christmas business 2021 – i.e. between October and December – there were 3.9 million devices. In total, Sony Interactive has sold 21.7 million PS5 consoles so far.
Considerably fewer PlayStation games were sold in the past quarter than in the previous months – no matter what the benchmark. The reason for this is the absence of further blockbusters like Horizon: Forbidden West and Grand Touring 7, which were mainly responsible for 14.5 million games sold from the group’s own production in February and March respectively. Between April and June there were ‘only’ 6.4 million games, less than half.
The result of the Interactive division is burdened by higher and further increasing development costs in the PlayStation Studios. Added to this are the costs of acquiring other studios: The Bungie’s $3.6 billion acquisition could be completed earlier than expected.
The missing software is also reflected in the number of monthly active users on PlayStation Network: 102 million is the lowest figure since early 2021. With a new loyalty program (‚PlayStation Stars‘) Sony wants to counteract this development.
Regardless of Introduction of a new tariff system in June the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers stagnated at 47.3 million (previous quarter: 47.4 million). So the new strategy with new price points and packages is not yet reflected in the Sony balance sheet.
The proportion of games purchased purely digitally via download has risen to a new record of 79 percent. Translated: Only one in five games will be purchased on Blu-Ray disc.