During the last session focused on financial results, Sony not only delivered impressive results. There are many signs that the PlayStation community is waiting for the latest productions from the PlayStation Studios teams.
This morning we reported on the very good performance of the PS5 – with more than 8 million units of the console delivered in the latest financial quarter, bringing the total result to 54.8 million units. The number of PlayStation Network users surpassed the previous record, reaching 123 million in one month. However, Sony has also shared less positive information about games from the brands' existing PlayStation Studios.
This was acknowledged by Hiroki Totoki, Sony Group President, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Until the end of the next fiscal year (until March 31, 2025), PlayStation will not release any major games from its existing IP! Citing God of War Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 as examples, the company continues to focus on high-quality projects and games as services.
In terms of first-party software, we intend to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and game development with live services. But while major projects are currently in development, we have no plans to release any new major franchise titles in the next fiscal year, such as God of War Ragnarok and Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
We know very well that a large part of the PlayStation Studios teams are working on completely new projects that take time. The drought in first-party premieres is also likely related to the change in strategy that Sony adopted several months ago – focusing on live service productions. Creating new titles takes time, and recent reports regarding, for example, Naughty Dog and online title removals suggest that some assumptions may not align with the developers' vision.
Meanwhile, the Japanese confirmed that PS5 sales at Christmas did not reach expected levels The company will not be able to achieve its sales goal of 25 million PlayStation 5 units in the current fiscal year – Expectations lowered by 4 million to 21 million consoles. However, Totoki is not concerned about the popularity of third-party games and expects PlayStation players' interest in premium services to gradually increase.
For PlayStation 5 consoles, which will be entering their fifth year of launch, partly due to entering the second half of the console cycle, our goal is to improve sales with a greater focus on balancing with profits, so we expect a gradual decline in unit sales from next fiscal year.
We expect third-party sales to continue to grow gradually due to the expansion of the PlayStation 5 install base and high levels of user engagement. For online services, we expect subscriber numbers to be the same or slightly lower this fiscal year due to the impact of the pricing adjustments we implemented this fiscal year, but we expect sales to gradually increase due to the shift to attractive premium services.
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