PS5 hits 61m as Sony’s year-on-year Q1 hardware sales fall but operating income rises

JAHGamer

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8 May 2023
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It's easy to check online what $299.99 in 2017 is worth today, comes to about $381 dollars.

Wondering how you calculated the inflation to equal $500 today.
That’s fake 🤡 I have my own calculation that’s more accurate. Now be quiet and run along
 

Evilms

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21 Jun 2022
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Thanks, very interesting charts. A suggestion for another one: PSN MAU.

It's crazy to see supposed Sony "fans" trying to shitpost with dooming fud with these numbers.

I'll try to make one for the PSN MAU, I'd have to review the old data.
 

Evilms

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1723038248-5.jpg


 

Entropi

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Well, the hardware sales slowly decreasing YoY is normal past the peak year of a console's sales cycle curve: during its first year, the sales of a console keep growing until they reach their peak (traditionally located somewhere between 2nd and 4th, sometimes 5h year).

After the peak the console's yearly sales keep decreasing. For that reason it's important to compare hardware sales launch aligned.

Yes, of course. The one variable making a difference, however, is Sony’s inability to lower the price of the PS5 at this point in the generation. We know smaller nodes are super expensive right now, so there is nothing Sony can do really.

Crazy. Hopefully they cut the price when they announce PS5 Pro. Because $500 for PS5 in 2024 is ridiculous.

I expect a price cut by the end of the year if Sony can get a good deal on 3nm or 4nm chips. The PS5 Pro can’t be 6nm unless it’s bigger and heavier than the launch version of the PS5, so maybe Sony will move the entire PS5 lineup to a smaller node finally.
 
26 Nov 2023
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Yes, they had the combo of Switch sales peak year + covid bump + huge AC sales at the same time and did great numbers.

Yup. On the other side of the fence Playstation was struggling with supply. Honestly the last couple of years has just been crazy unpredictable and wild.
 

ethomaz

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21 Jun 2022
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These are good results profit wise.

But the hardware falling is really warning.
PS5 is probably too expensive at this time in a generation... PS4 was already $299/€299 for a year in 2017 and already getting deals at retails below that.
PS5 is still $500/€550 and that is even more a issue in EU countries where PS5 is really tracking behind PS4.
 

Dabaus

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Probably about time for an official price drop with a marketing campaign to go along with it. They can clearly afford it.
 
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Impulse

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People literally spending more time and more money on the PS ecosystem and people are still complaining about PC ports lol.
 

Danja

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Falling further behind the PS4 and this holiday season will be been worse for them. This is what happens when non gamers take over a brand and get greedy.

It's very telling everyone constantly hinging all hope on GTA 6, that says enough about the state of the PlayStation brand these days.

That 18 million target looking spooky. They should be ashamed of themselves for only being able to ship 300k more than the Switch. That means they over shipped last quarter to reach 21 million or whatever it was.
 

Yurinka

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Why don’t they cut the price? Is it because of how the world economy currently is? Or is it because they’re trying to maximize profits?
In all the previous generations, the price of the components needed to manufacture a console got cheaper over time, eventually allowing them to end selling the console at a profit, or giving them room to apply price cuts.

This generation the opposite happened: the components got more and more expensive due to huge demand of covid (may people bought PCs/laptops/tablets/etc) and because other industries required a shit ton of chips more than usual: electronic currency farming, electronic vehicles, servers for AI etc. The fuel pricing also increased, making shipments more expensive. And there's also a big global inflation, which also increases prices in general.

So initially things were as usual: had great launch window sales to the point they were able to sell some SKUs at profit, but costs unusually started to grow and grow to the point that the loses per hardware unit sold were too high and they had to increase prices and do some actions (in a revision they changed some components to be able to use multiple providers and don't depend on a single one) to compensate it and keep it at decent levels. Not only happened to Sony, but almost everyone even beyond consoles or gaming.

Totoki (Sony Chief of Finantials Operations) explained this some time ago and said that looking forward will be difficult to reduce these costs. I assume not only because of the costs themselves, but because seems that we'll continue with big inflation in upcoming years, and the USA vs China competition may affect their business in the future. So to assuming that hardware will provide them loses they can avoid, he wants to maximize the profit in all the other areas to compensate loses from hardware: console game, addons and accesories sold for PS, PS+ subscriptions, SIE revenue outside PS, etc.

But the hardware falling is really warning.
No, it's normal on this point of a console sales cycle: the sales of all consoles make a curve and after their peak -which all 3 consoles of this gen already passed- their yearly sales normally decrease every year.

As we seen in some graph of this thread, launch aligned it's performing almost at the same level than their best selling consoles ever, PS2 and PS4:

OmSIU4U.png


With the difference that PS5 had the chip shortages issues and has not been able to apply the price cuts that all the previous consoles had at this point, and instead had to increase prices.

But now Sony gets more money than ever from each console sold not only because sells the console more expensive: but because their users spend more money than ever on games (game sales + addons), game subs and accesories etc. Players also spend more time there (not only in PS5, many still are on PS4), which leads to think that in the future these users will continue there spending money and at the end of the generation will have spent way more money than in the previous one.

In fact this fiscal year the generation will become the top grossing one for them, and already generated more profit than all the previous ones combined:

image.png


They are more than fine. Obviously if would be great to find some solution that would allow them to price cut the console at least in some key European country without killing the profits, but as of now the priority for them is to maximize profit because costs and inflation very likely will continue rising the years ahead, and also because to have a gazillion superexpensive first party games under development is very risky, and it's impossible to avoid that from time to time some game will get cancelled or will tank.

Worldwide -and particularly western- economy seems that will struggle in following years, so it's time to focus on profitability and save money for the future just in case they need it.
 
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Etifilio

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PS4 was $299 in 2017. Just sayin’.
and PS5 is $500 in 2024, it just shows how consoles are no longer the cheap way to play games they used to be, this is dangerous because if not for price, the only advantage consoles have are the exclusives and PlayStation doesn't truly have exclusives anymore, so if we find ourselfs in an inflationated $600/$650 PS6 generation, the sales can be very much impacted with users staying on PS5, just like right now, half of MAU users for PlayStation are still on PS4.
 
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Evilnemesis8

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These are good results profit wise.

But the hardware falling is really warning.
PS5 is probably too expensive at this time in a generation... PS4 was already $299/€299 for a year in 2017 and already getting deals at retails below that.
PS5 is still $500/€550 and that is even more a issue in EU countries where PS5 is really tracking behind PS4.

Things are quite expensive and people are just getting priced out of buying a PS5. But there's no margins at all for a permanent price cut, it's not going to change any time soon.

People are too busy buying food at stupid prices. Technically many countries/markets have avoided the official definition of a recession but it's clear the buying power of their citizens has taking a massive hit.
 

SuperPotato

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and PS5 is $500 in 2024, it just shows how consoles are no longer the cheap way to play games they used to be, this is dangerous because if not for price, the only advantage consoles have are the exclusives and PlayStation doesn't truly have exclusives anymore, so if we find ourselfs in an inflationated $600/$650 PS6 generation, the sales can be very much impacted with users staying on PS5, just like right now, half of MAU users for PlayStation are still on PS4.

They are cheap compared to a gaming PC.
 

Etifilio

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27 Jun 2023
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PS
- launched at 500€
- big supply shortages for almost 2 years
- price increase in all major markets except the US with no price cut in sight
- lackluster first party output for over a year

The fact that it got to 60+ million in less than 4 years is actually impressive. What other console has done this?

Just look at Xbox. Exact same circumstances and hasn't even sold half as much, even with a much cheaper SKU.
that's because their console became undesirable... and it's currently happening with PlayStation right now, Sony is turning PlayStation into an undesirable place to play
 

Etifilio

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27 Jun 2023
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They are cheap compared to a gaming PC.
not necessarily, a Steam Deck is $399 and 90% of the games Sony released on PC so far are Steam Deck Verified, meaning, they're optmized for Steam Deck, and Steam will for sure launch more iterations of their hardware, so, again, i see all of this as potential threats for the future.
 

Etifilio

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27 Jun 2023
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These are good results profit wise.

But the hardware falling is really warning.
PS5 is probably too expensive at this time in a generation... PS4 was already $299/€299 for a year in 2017 and already getting deals at retails below that.
PS5 is still $500/€550 and that is even more a issue in EU countries where PS5 is really tracking behind PS4.
go put more tentpole games on PC
 

SuperPotato

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PS

that's because their console became undesirable... and it's currently happening with PlayStation right now, Sony is turning PlayStation into an undesirable place to play

All it needs is a price drop and for games like COD/Fifa/2k/Madden to drop last gen support.