After soaring, PS5 sales are declining due to component shortages. Despite this, the manufacturer explodes the counters thanks in particular to the figures of the games.
Sony Interactive Entertainment has released its results for the fiscal year just ended. And if there are very good in terms of turnover and profits, the sales of PS5 are gray for a reason: the shortage of semiconductors.
Sony misses PS5 sales targets
As of March 31, 2022, the PS5 has sold a total of 19.2 million units in the whole world. Over the last fiscal year, from April 2021 to March 2022, 11.5 million consoles have been sold while Sony’s forecast was 14.8 million. The manufacturer thus misses its objectives with more than 3 million difference. And over the last quarter, sales are also necessarily lower with 2 million machines sold against 3.3 million in the same period last year.
Why are PlayStation 5 sales declining the way they are? Because, again and again, of the shortage that affects the PS5 more than the Xbox Series. Sony sells all the consoles put on the market, but unfortunately, the production does not follow the strong demand.
As a result, and as indicated by journalist Oscar Lemaire, it is a “real underperformance compared to the PS4” which had sold 14.8 million in the equivalent period.
In total, the PlayStation 4 reaches 117.2 million units sold, but only 100,000 new consoles found takers in the last quarter. Clearly, it no longer seems to interest many people and Sony will not be able to rely on it.
Revenue on the rise from games, PS Plus on the decline
On the other hand, on the software side, there is no crisis at all. In effect, PS5 and PS4 game sales for the last quarter amount to 70.5 milliona nice increase of 9.1 million compared to 2021’s 61.4 million. In all of these titles, first-party PlayStation Studios productions accounted for 14.5 millionbe there another increase of 6.6 million.
The share of dematerialized is down and now represents only 71% against 79% previously. However, DLCs and microtransactions largely dominate (31.5% of sales; 54.95% of the software offer).
With these great results, PlayStation achieves the best year in its history with a turnover of 19.2 billion euros (+3%) and profits of 2.5 billion euros (+1%).
Between April 2022 and March 2023, the Japanese firm estimates that its turnover will increase by 34% thanks to the sale of consoles and games. A projection that includes the objective of distributing 18 million more PS5s by the end of the new current fiscal yearand probably the release of PSVR2 which would be delayed in 2023.
Finally, a few weeks before the launch of the new PS Plus offers, the service is losing subscribers. A lot ? No. the playstation Plus goes from 47.6 million subscribers to 47.4 million, or 200,000 people who did not renew their subscription. As for the number of active users of the PlayStation Network, it is more than 106 million against 109 million last year.