It’s a first calendar quarter we’ve never seen before, but it’s no surprise that it’s thanks to the continued growth of the gaming industry…
Sony has published its financial report for the January-March quarter, bringing the previous fiscal year to a close. During this period, 6.3 million PlayStation 5 units were shipped to stores, 4.3 million more than in the first quarter of 2022. Sony’s console now stands at 38.4 million units. The company intends to keep up the pace, as Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s president and chief financial officer, said that they intend to continue to accelerate the expansion of PlayStation 5, with a target of 25 million PS5 sales in the fiscal year beginning April 1 (i.e., 63.4 million by the end of March 2024), the highest ever in PlayStation’s history.
Here are more statistics. In the first three months of 2023, Sony sold 68 million PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 games, 2.5 million fewer than in the first quarter of 2022. Of the 68 million, 9.5 million were internally developed (PlayStation Studios), first-party development, down 5 million from 14.5 million a year earlier. Digital sales (=PlayStation Store) accounted for 70%, down 1% from last year. The number of monthly active PlayStation Network users at the end of March 2023 was 108 million, an increase of 2 million. The number of PlayStation Plus subscribers remained unchanged, halting the downward trend of the three-tier model (PlayStation Plus Essential/Extra/Premium): 47.4 million subscribers.
The PlayStation 4 figures are now only counted in software sales, so its hardware sales are no longer significant. By 2023, PlayStation Studios’ line-up for this year does not look strong (nothing has been officially announced), so it must change. The hardware target could be further dented by the rumored Q-Lite handheld (for Remote Play only) and the new PS5 model, which does not have a Blu-ray drive as standard but can be connected separately.
A painful question: where are the statistics for the PlayStation VR2!?
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