Last week, Sony delivered its latest quarterly report and revealed, among other things, that they have now sold 54.8 million PlayStation 5 units. Impressive, it may seem, but clearly less than Sony themselves had expected, which led them to lower the forecast for the fiscal year by four million consoles.
Almost worse, however, is that despite more and more gamers buying the PlayStation 5, profit margins are dropping rapidly, and are now below 6%, the lowest they have been in 10 years. In addition, it was stated that there will be no new games in Sony's biggest series until April 2025 at the earliest. As you might guess, this had negative consequences for the stock price and CNBC reported yesterday that around $10 billion in market capitalisation was wiped out for Sony in just a few days. And to make matters worse, the trend has continued.
New PlayStation CEO Hiroki Totoki stated last week that they will now focus more aggressively on multi-format (essentially meaning PC) and live service games, but we suspect that it could be a rather shaky year for Sony as they try to adjust their strategies to sell more consoles and games and make more money from services.