Sony finally published new sales figures of the PlayStation 4, and Jim Ryan, the president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, said that its successor had more pre-orders in the United States than the PS4.
Sony’s financial results announced that in the July-September quarter, 1.5 million PlayStation 4 units were shipped, which is 1.3 million down year-on-year (as July-September 2019 had 2.8 million units). With this number, the total shipments have reached 113.8 million units.
The PlayStation Plus (which will be discussed with its November games later today…) has reached 45.9 million subscribers, which means the subscription service gained 9 million subs in a year (by September 30, 2019, there were 36.9 million subscribers). 80.9 million PlayStation 4 games were sold in the July-September quarter. This is 10,3 million up year-on-year (70.6 in Q2 FY19). 12.4 million of them were first-party titles (6.1 million up year-on-year from 6.3 million). 59% of the sales were digital (PlayStation Store), which is a significant boost from last year (45%).
Sony has increased its forecast for the Game & Network Services Segment (which includes PlayStation). It had 2,500 billion yen (approx. USD 23.5 billion) in sales and 240 billion yen (approx. USD 2.26 billion) in operating income for the fiscal year ending March 30, 2021. It’s now 2,600 billion yen (approx. USD 24.9 billion) in sales and 300 billion yen (approx. USD 2.87 billion) in operating income.
Ryan told Reuters that the PlayStation 5 pre-sold as many units in the first twelve hours as the PlayStation 4 could manage in its first twelve weeks. „The demand as expressed by the level of pre-order has been very, very considerable. It may well be that not everybody who wants to buy a PlayStation 5 on launch day will be able to find one,” Ryan said, adding that the company is „working as hard as we ever can” to ensure supply of the PlayStation 5 for the year-end shopping season.
About Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios (which includes studios such as Naughty Dog, Sucker Punch, Guerrilla Games, Media Molecule), he said that it’ll continue to grow its studio capability organically, adding that „where we can bolster our in-house capability with selective mergers and acquisitions that might be possible.”
So Sony is planning to acquire more studios, and they should, as Microsoft’s acquisition of Zenimax means Xbox Game Studios have Bethesds’s studios on their side as well. Ryan also said that it’s up to Sony to drive engagement in terms of how far the expansion in gaming brought about by stuck-at-home players due to COVID-19 will continue in the long term: „We’re looking upwards and thinking that we can do better than we thought we could.”
The PlayStation 5 will launch on November 12 in America and November 19 in Europe, respectively.
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