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[Ebrietas]

Only if you listen to Xbots.
It's pretty remarkable that Sony has remained this strong without a strong set of first party exclusives.

That tells you how strong the Playstation brand is.

Sony was never totally reliant on first party in order to succeed (unlike a certain other company who needs to sell a bazillion copies of mario kart for thier business model to work). They just need "enough" first party exclusives to act as a moat for their platform to protect against the competition.

What "enough" looks like in the current environment and how much investment that requires is a question they are probably trying to answer right now.

 

[yurinka]

Shrinking the user base would be selling negative amounts, wich they can't.

There's the a difference between console userbase and its active userbase.

Console userbase is the amount of consoles sold, which only grows because it includes the ones collecting dust.

The active userbase (the one I was talking about), in this case monthly active userbase, is the people who played the last month. If they continue playing, means they continue paing for games, addons ro gamesubs.

I was more talking about from the PS4 era, not from last year.

Here you have a comparision of this quarter vs how they were at the same point in the PS4 era, there is a substantial growth (a third in active userbase, half in content & services revenue):

Here you have a detailed comparision of their total revenue and the one from hardware, software, game subs and "others" (now are just accessories, back then included off-PS first party revenue there). In addition to hardware and software units, digital software ratio. A huge increase in all metrics except hardware units (increased in revenue, but not in units):

Back then they didn't share quarterly first-party sales units, so we can't make a direct comparision and we have to make a guesstimate with the available data. As reference, this Q1FY18 quarter was the one after the one where they released the record breaking GoW 2018.

We see there that this Q1FY25 first-party were 10.47% of the full game PS sales and last fiscal, not counting addons. And in the whole FY24 were 9.53%. So let's say it's now roughly a 10%.

Back in 2018 their "game software" revenue didn't include the off-PS first-party revenue, and addons were a smaller percent of it than it's now. To make a very rough guesstimate, let's check a 10% of the 268,243 bn yen they posted as software revenue back then to try to guess more or less their first party revenue: it would be 26,824 bn yen. It's roughly the same they did in Q1FY25 as off-PS first-party revenue: 25,330 bn yen.

Meaning, with first party games nowadays Sony pretty likely is making outside PS alone roughly the same money they were making in PS the quarter after they released GoW 2018. And nowadays in PS pretty likely they make way more revenue (remember, Sony broke their fastest selling game records with titles released in 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024) than they did back in 2018 specially thanks to the addons revenue from the 1st party GaaS in PS.

Meaning, doing a super rough guesstimate, seems that pretty likely (specially thanks to GaaS and off-PS) Sony should be making over twice first-party revenue than they were doing back in Q1FY18.

 

[Conflict NZ]

Not only did sony jack the price up in the rest of the world outside of the US, they seemingly did it for no reason and got a record profit from it.

PS6 will be very expensive.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

Good numbers for a horrible game line up.

 

[mckmas8808]

Q1 PlayStation Profits

Q1 FY2025 - $1 billion
Q1 FY2024 - $440 million
Q1 FY2023 - $332 million
Q1 FY2022 - $359 million
Q1 FY2021 - $563 million
Q1 FY2020 - $842 million
Q1 FY2019 - $502 million
Q1 FY2018 - $567 million

Thanks to Avitsky from the IB Forum.

This is incredible! It goes to show at this point, Sony doesn't have to increase the price of the PS5 for the rest of the year.

They're lucky they have no competition cuz their first party output has been terrible this gen.

Microsoft LITERALLY spent $over $80 Billion on buying Publishers that house like 20 different dev teams and you STILL call that no competition?

Shrinking the user base would be selling negative amounts, wich they can't.

Still, it has fell off the PS4 numbers another 700K units. And Xbox is collapsing and they aren't taking nearly anything of that. Maybe if not fir their policies they would be selling more, who knows.

Brand damage and lose of goodwill are not easily seen on data until it starts to translate into weaker sales of your core product. Maybe in some years, and definitely more if they would release their output day one on PC or in other consoles, that would destroy PS perceived value for PS6 cycle .

Specially if MS can get with it about releasing a consolized PC and brand and identify it as Xbox, giving all your weapons to your enemy isn't wise.

It's the Price! The PS4 was at $300 per console by this time and the PS4 Pro was $400. The PS5 is $400-$500 and the PS5 Pro is $700!!!! Let that sink in for a second. The demand is there for Playstation. The price is what's slowing them down compared to the PS4 at this point.

Not only did sony jack the price up in the rest of the world outside of the US, they seemingly did it for no reason and got a record profit from it.

PS6 will be very expensive.

It might also mean they increase those prices to get their 11% profit margin that they were looking for. People forget their Playstation profit margins dropped to 6% in 2023, which is scary low for them. This FY it'll be 11-12%, which they were shooting for 10%.

 

[John Wick]

You DO realize that "other" company is now valued at 4 trillion as of just last week, right? Stick to bragging about your console of choice selling more. Because the company behind them is a lot poorer than the company behind the "other" box.

Oh no the 4 trillion dollar company? Yet it can't afford to keep studios open and keep staff employed eh?

 

[sachos]

I dont get it, they are doing so good and are easily the market leaders and yet they want to massively pivot their strategy with a really high risk of devaluing their brand and platform...

 

[Sooner]

You DO realize that "other" company is now valued at 4 trillion as of just last week, right? Stick to bragging about your console of choice selling more. Because the company behind them is a lot poorer than the company behind the "other" box.

Who gives a crap about the company that makes money completely unrelated to gaming, while failing nonstop in the gaming sphere, when we are discussing gaming?

Why not brag about Apple? They have Apple Arcade. So that must be a much better gaming experience than Nintendo or PlayStation because Apple is a larger corporation.

 

[reinking]

You DO realize that "other" company is now valued at 4 trillion as of just last week, right? Stick to bragging about your console of choice selling more. Because the company behind them is a lot poorer than the company behind the "other" box.

That is a sad defense for Xbox.

 

[Topher]

That is a sad defense for Xbox.

Careful. You are getting close to triggering a really touchy nerve in this thread. $4 trillion corporations have feelings too, you know

 

[RetroGamingUK]

I dont get it, they are doing so good and are easily the market leaders and yet they want to massively pivot their strategy with a really high risk of devaluing their brand and platform...

As soon as Xbox sales collapsed and Microsoft started putting all their games on PS5 the need for Sony to have exclusives ended.

 

[John Wick]

Careful. You are getting close to triggering a really touchy nerve in this thread. $4 trillion corporations have feelings too, you know

I should have expanded on this on my earlier reply but it's hilarious how some people used to use the MS valuation and yearly profit as a means to argue against the other companies in gaming. The 80 billion spent by MS to buy AB is nothing as they make more profit than that in a year etc. MS could buy Sony ten times over yet still a failing games company and firing staff and studios. Clowns gotta be clowns

 

[Ronin_7]

Just think for a minute. PS5 is selling less than PS4 in the same period despite:

- the addition of Chinese consumers.

- XBOX being no competition.

- A stronger market position than last gen.

- A better tech than PS4.


The trend is awful. Instead of fixing up their core business problems, they go full retard by devaluating the brand even more, which will lead to less sales next gen, price increases to make up for it, etc.

Delusional takes

 

[jm89]

You DO realize that "other" company is now valued at 4 trillion as of just last week, right? Stick to bragging about your console of choice selling more. Because the company behind them is a lot poorer than the company behind the "other" box.

Yet xbox is still in third place

Microsoft opened up their warchest to buy abk, but Sony still using Xbox as their punching bag.

 

[Panajev2001a]

You DO realize that "other" company is now valued at 4 trillion as of just last week, right? Stick to bragging about your console of choice selling more. Because the company behind them is a lot poorer than the company behind the "other" box.

It is exactly for this kind of situation (and a bit the attitude) that true competition means that the 4 Trillion dollar company needs to get spanked silly by the other two small competitors that offer better products. This is competition working, this is healthy competition.

 

[Panajev2001a]

I should have expanded on this on my earlier reply but it's hilarious how some people used to use the MS valuation and yearly profit as a means to argue against the other companies in gaming. The 80 billion spent by MS to buy AB is nothing as they make more profit than that in a year etc. MS could buy Sony ten times over yet still a failing games company and firing staff and studios. Clowns gotta be clowns

It feels like wishing they would use their war chest (not made in the gaming sector) to spend their competition out of business (which is MS's intention but luckily for gamers they sucked at execution so far) which is not how competitive markets should operate at all… and thus all these appeals to the company size and might.