In the face of exceptional results recorded by PS5 as far as console hardware sales go, the decline in game sales it is an element that seems worry SonyBloomberg said in a new report released following the release of the company’s financial results.
The fact that PS5 has reached 38.4 million units sold, with a record quarter of 6.3 million consoles placed, demonstrates how the hardware sector is in perfect health, but precisely for this reason the result relating to the software sales and serviceswhich instead show a certain decline.
“Hardware sales are increasing in line with Sony’s forecast, but software acceleration, i.e. the most profitable part of the gaming business, remains weak”, reported Hideki Yasuda, analyst at Toyo Securities quoted by Bloomberg, also referring to the 2.5 million drop recorded in the software sector, with its 68 million games sold.
PSN’s monthly active users dropped from 112m to 108m and PlayStation Plus users, as we’ve seen, remained largely the same at 47.4m (after a slight bump that offset the earlier decline). On the other hand, there were no major exits by first party teams in the quarter under review, which is also demonstrated by the sharp decline in game sales PlayStation Studios compared to the same period of the previous year, which went from 14.5 to 9.5 million in the quarter.
“On the software front, Sony has some work to do,” analyst Serkan Toto said, because obviously selling games and services is the most lucrative part of the business. In any case, this physiologically tends to increase after hardware sales, so it is an evolving situation. For this year, meanwhile, we know that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 will be released during this fiscal year, as Sony has reassured, but without mentioning other AAAs.