Sony does not plan to release any major recognizable franchises before the end of the fiscal year, meaning March 2025. Because of this, the Japanese console industry giant expects console sales to drop significantly over the 12-month period. In the released financial reports of Sony Interactive Entertainment, the gaming division of Sony hit new highs in terms of revenue, with PlayStation console sales hitting 54.7 million. Even so, Sony has reduced the impressive budgeted sales target of 25 million sales for the year ending March 2024.
For this year, though, Sony has reached 16.4 million unit sales but had expected to sell around 21 million PlayStation 5s. Sony’s quality of exclusive games has surely reached new heights in 2023, and if all goes well, Sony will likely double down on exceptional single-player experiences along with successful live service titles like Helldivers 2. Due to how game development cycles go, Sony will have to deal with a slow year in 2024. This means we should not expect any major franchise titles like Spider-Man 2 or God of War.
Sony’s First-Party Exclusive Franchises Will Take a Break According To the Financial Report
Sony has confirmed that its focus is not only on first-party software but also on improving its live-service offerings. Sony’s best game for 2023 was easily Insomniac Games’ Spider-Man 2. The excellent game has already sold over 10 million units worldwide and hasn’t even been out for a year. The Spider-Man series has sold over 50 million copies in total, including console and PC sales.
Sony’s PS Plus revenue has reached its highest numbers ever at ¥137.1 billion. This is a big jump from ¥122.2 billion last period. The monthly active users for PlayStation’s subscription service have reached a record high of 123 million from 112 million last year.
The PlayStation 5 sales saw a jump because of the release of the recent Slim model. Sony is planning on launching an improved version of the PlayStation 5, aka the PS5 Pro, sometime around the holiday of 2024 or early 2025. Leaks suggest that the PS5 Pro will have an upscaling solution like Nvidia’s DLSS or AMD’s FSR 3 onboard.
