Sony slashed its annual profit outlook, warning that PlayStation game sales will be worse. In its latest earnings report, Sony said it shipped 2.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles, up just 4 percent from a year ago (2.3 million units). Cumulative shipments of PlayStation 5 now stand at 21.7 million units.
While hardware sales rose slightly year-over-year, game-related sales fell 26 percent, which Sony blamed in an investor call on a lack of big PlayStation games this year and a decline in gamers’ playtime, with PlayStation Network monthly active users down 3 percent to 102 million. Sony launched the exclusive Gran Turismo 7 and Horizon Forbidden West earlier this year, but Elden Ring, which launched on multiple platforms at the same time, attracted a lot of gamers’ attention.
Citing Reuters, Sony has revised its annual profit for the games business to 16% and the media outlet predicts that game sales will continue to fall in the next quarter, with the recent acquisition of Bungie for $3.7 billion also having an impact.
The decline in Sony’s PlayStation game sales indicates that the gaming industry is currently on a downward spiral after experiencing rapid growth during the epidemic. Microsoft does not disclose Xbox shipment figures, but in its latest quarterly report said Xbox hardware revenue fell 11 percent, Xbox content and services revenue fell 6 percent, and overall gaming revenue fell 7 percent.
Sony previously forecast 18 million PlayStation 5 shipments in fiscal 2022, but the company did not reiterate that forecast in the earnings report. Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s chief financial officer, said at today’s investor conference: “Supply is not very abundant, and demand is not completely down. The most important thing now is that we need to meet these demands”.
