March and April are the months of financial results in the video game industry. While navigating through pdfs full of numbers is not the most fun thing in the world for most of the audience, there is usually information about how companies are doing. Something in which Sony is not an exception. Since they have released their latest financial results and drop details about what we should expect from PlayStation in the future.
The most important thing is that Sony has met its financial results for the year, although they fell short of their forecasts. They expected to sell 25 million units of PlayStation 5, but they ended up with around 21 million as of March 31, 2024. That puts them on the same trajectory as they had with PlayStation 4, which accumulated around 60 million units sold in the same period of its lifespan. The same number that PlayStation 5 has reached.
Sales, in addition, have increased by 17% compared to the previous year, accumulating 4.26 trillion yen, around 240 million euros. Something that has increased thanks to non-Sony titles, downloadable content, and the impact of the weakness of the yen compared to the dollar and the euro. Something that has also been favored by the success of a game that no one expected anything from: Helldivers 2.
The Arrowhead game is currently the best-selling game at launch. Helldivers 2 has sold 12 million units in the first 10 weeks since its release. This has surpassed the previous best launch in PlayStation history, which happened last year, and it is God of War Ragnarok, which managed to sell 11 million copies. This demonstrates that the PC release, and particularly simultaneous releases, help boost their video game sales.
In fact, according to interim CEO Hiroki Totoki, their interest is to focus more on porting games from their catalog to PC. This is explained not only by the success of Helldivers 2, but also by the success that other Sony games have had throughout the year.
In addition, Sony has taken the opportunity to announce the CEOs who will replace Jim Ryan. Hermen Hulst and Hideaki Nishino will be in charge of this position, serving as CEOs within the company. Despite these changes, Sony expects a slight decrease in revenue for fiscal year 2025, as they expect to sell fewer consoles and not release any games from their major franchises during this fiscal year. However, they still anticipate generating more revenue than in the previous two fiscal years.
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