If there’s one area where PlayStation continues to reign supreme, it’s revenue. Still up 28% compared to last year, it reached 4.9 billion euros in the April-June quarter alone. It must be said that everything is up compared to last year, that we are talking about revenue generated by games, consoles, additional content, accessories or subscriptions, despite the disappearance of the number of subscribers PlayStation Plus. The manufacturer has unfortunately decided to no longer communicate this data, the evolution of which could be observed each quarter. We therefore remain with the 47.4 million members communicated last March, in the hope of having news from time to time. That said, it will be enough to take a look at the turnover of subscriptions to get an idea of the evolution of PlayStation Plus.
Did Sony overestimate the demand for PS5?
Sony Interactive Entertainment distributed 3.3 million PS5s between April and June 2023, which is naturally better than last year, but it is a bit too ordinary a volume given the manufacturer’s exceptionally ambitious target (25 million of consoles to be distributed over the fiscal year). Worn by The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the Switch did better in the same quarter (3.9 million) for comparison. In the press conference following the earnings release, CFO Sadahiko Hayakawa acknowledged that PS5 sales were “ slightly worse than expected progress while noting that demand picked up again in July with the summer promotion. The total PS5 fleet as of June 30, 2023 in any case reached 41.7 million consoles distributed, knowing that the milestone of 40 million consoles sold to consumers was announced on July 27.
56.5 million PlayStation games were distributed over the quarter, a nice increase of 8.4 million compared to last year. Overall, PlayStation Studios games represent 6.6 million sales, a volume similar to last year and which should not see any particular rebound before the 3rd fiscal quarter, that of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2. Speaking of house games, the presentation indicates that an indeterminate number of first party games have been postponed to the next financial year, i.e. beyond March 2024. It must be said that the last PlayStation Showcase was scant in this area with the only announcement of Helldivers 2 for 2023 and teasers for Fairgames and Concord, the GaaS of young recruits Haven Studios and Firewalk Studios.
If the turnover is stratospheric, it is however not the same for the operating profit which fell by 7% to reach 313 million euros. In question, a rise in costs mainly linked to the impact of acquisitions, in particular that of Bungie. For the full fiscal year ending March 2024, Sony Interactive Entertainment is banking on record revenue of 26.5 billion euros (far ahead of the group’s other businesses) and operating profit of 1. 7 billion euros (compared to 1.6 billion euros the previous year).