PS5 Sales Pass 61.6 Million Units Amid Strong Growth for PlayStation Revenue and Profit

Sony released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, alongside an update on PS5 shipments.

[dveio]

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[blackblades]

..

[dveio]

... !

There you go, I instantly like ppl making me laugh. ;)

Btw: Very decent results for Playstation. 1.8m behind PS4 globally in shipments. Growth in every segment except hardware. Raised forecast for their next Q.

[blackblades]

Ps5pro and showcase if there is one will boost them numbers

[outsider1624]

Don't forget GTA6.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Ps5 is just too op rn

[Aloymetal]

It's PlayStation after all, strong global brand.

[anast]

Agreed. They've been OP since the 90s.

[Good-Smurf]

Now Sony knows what to do next to raise that numbers even more, it's time for PS5 Pro reveal event and more importantly some new games announcement from your big studios.

[S2Killinit]

Yes I agree. But, the inflation and current state of the economy is a concern. People just don’t have enough disposable income at this time.

[JEECE]

Which is why they need to drop the price of the standard PS5 when they announce the Pro. That way they are appealing to the consumer who is willing to spend more for a better experience with the Pro and to the consumers who can't afford the current price. $400 for the slim with disc drive and $300-350 for the slim digital suggests itself.

No matter what they need to avoid trying to make the digital only PS5 the "cheap casual machine." Many casuals still want to walk in GameStop or Best Buy and buy discs, and probably don't even really understand the digital landscape. That was one of Xbox's mistakes with the Series S.

[ChasterMies]

I see it differently. For the cost of a couple nights at a hotel, you can buy a PS5. For the cost of taking the family to a movie, you can buy a game. For the cost of taking the family out for dinner, you can buy a year’s worth of PS+ Extra. PS5 is an even cheaper entertainment option now than it was in 2020.

[S2Killinit]

@JEECE
agreed on the price drop.

@Chaster
You are assuming that people have the money to spend on those alternative expenditures and also assuming that they are able to forgo those expenses.

[anast]

People find the money for these things. People are entertainment junkies. The Pro will sell out in a microsecond.

[darthv72]

Lowering the price wont do nearly as much as releasing high quality 1st party games. Right now people are just waiting to see what those will be in the coming months/year. Its okay for people to be patient, they will buy when they feel it is right for them.

[JEECE]

I think you are seriously overestimating how much the consumers who are still on the fence about PS5 care about first party titles. People who actually know and care what a first party title is have already bought a PS5. Now they need to convince the casuals who have been hearing their friends talk about how cool College Football 25 is but who just can't quite justify the price. A price drop is going to do a lot more to win those people over than an announcement of Ghost of Tsushima 2.

[darthv72]

^^....that's the thing about consumers on the fence. They are there for their own reasons. It could be price or it could be something more personal... like a particular game they are hoping will get announced. Regardless of why... they will find their own jumping in point. Not like those of us who just wanted it no matter what.

[shinoff2183]

It certainly would help by lowering the cost. 1st party games help no doubt but the price of the machine is the biggest factor since most gamers aren't hard-core. I'd bet you if you said the words specifically "1st party" most wouldn't even know what you mean.

[darthv72]

^^...and i feel more 1st party games will help more. As I said above, people already see what's out and the needle isnt moving as much as Sony would like. Lowering the price is one factor, but the titles available are still the same ones they already see. And many dont just buy because of the potential of what's to come, but instead of what they know is to come. And that is where Sony needs more 1st party games. They have been fairly quiet as of late, and people will continue to be patient until they see something that interests them.

truth be told, im glad i got mine on day 1 as not only will i be there to play what Sony eventually reveals but i can play all the great games they've already released. these fence sitters dont know what they are missing out on but that's their choice.

[S2Killinit]

PS5 is getting a steady stream of exclusive games, but sire, first party exclusives always provide a boost to sales, Sony knows this better than anyone.

It’s not like they aren’t selling PS5s like hot cakes as is though.

[thesoftware730]

The hardware sales are down, they missed even the lowered target they set.

They are boasting about MAU and subscription services.

Strange things happening when that is not the headlines, but make it sound rather positive. People just aren't buying the same amount of consoles as they use to...times a charging.

[slate91]

Wait, 4 years in at 61 million is really good though...

[thesoftware730]

I did not say it wasn't., that is some good numbers.

I am mainly pointing out that the other part of the story is the hardware decline YoY, and the positive from Sony own account iis the engagement, MAU and Subscription services.

It's something that a lot of people on here don't consider a viable means of counting success...Sony sure does. Sony is doing really well considering they are not really releasing 1st party games at the moment, and had a major management shake up, and Bungie failed to be the indicator or their Gaas push thus far...it's been a hard year for gaming companies.

[fr0sty]

Gaming is still recovering from losing almost 2 years of productivity to COVID, as well as the inflationary post-COVID economy (all those stimulus checks, unemployment and loans had to be paid for somehow), and the entire industry has been feeling it this year, with layoff after layoff. That is likely why Sony took a year off of first party releases and coasted on third parties for a while... Let them take the risk, the system is selling anyway, and then come back strong as the economy starts bouncing back.

[pwnmaster3000]

This isn’t Xbox bro. Stop trying to subliminally bring them up lol. 61 million is great sales for any console.
I bet if it was Xbox you would be hard praising them right now.

[Aloymetal]

Yup, and people keep forgetting we had the chip issues in the first 2 yrs of this gen, numbers would've been even better for PlayStation. Still does not matter because the PS brand is just too strong globally.

[thesoftware730]

Ok, man, I'm not arguing with you. I never said sales were bad, I'm pointing out that Sub-services, engagement, and MAU are important barometers.

The gaming market as a whole has faced a difficulty in a changing landscape. I just wanted to let you know that you never addressed that and jumped to something I never said.

[InUrFoxHole]

Thesoftware730
Is 💯 correct. Facts are facts.

[pwnmaster3000]

Lmao two of the biggest Xbox fans agreeing with each other. Why am I not surprise.

[Elda]

Pretty much.

[Einhander1972]

Of course you tried to put a negative spin on it.

Sales are down but that is compared to a near record setting quarter in 2023, they are still matching pace with the PS4.

Contrast that with xbox whose sales are down (over 40%) when compared to 2023 where they were also down (over 20%) compared to 2022, and are selling significantly less than their previous console.

And as for the other financials, PlayStation is increasing its financials based off its own success while Microsoft's reported gains were almost entirely based on Activision's purchase. Which was of course very misleading especially when you compare to Activision's financial reports prior to the purchase and realize that Activision itself was down under Microsoft.

So to boil it down.

Playstation's report is looking really strong.
Microsoft's losses was covered over by Activision purchase and Activision's losses weren't reported individually.

[thesoftware730]

I'm not talking about Xbox man, I stated facts that happened and posted facts from their earnings report. No way around it, I even gave reasons why the console sales went down, logical reasons, that had nothing to do with fanboy BS.

I never said Sony's sales were bad, look again please, the fact is hardware is down but the engagement, MAU, and sub-services did well, a good part of the very reason for the revenue and profit is what I was pointing out, why in blue blazes are you making it seem like I didn't post facts of the earnings report? You are spinning things as I did not post any objective, irrelevant PoVs like you did.

get off it man.

[Einhander1972]

We all know exactly what you were doing.

That's why at the time of writing you have 16 downvotes and 0 up votes.

[Lightning77]

You're way too old to be acting the way you act, seriously.

Everything he said is in the article.

You ppl need to grow up badly you're not 12.

[thesoftware730]

Einhandr,

"That's why at the time of writing you have 16 downvotes and 0 up votes."

And that means what to me? It's the brigade defending against the very official report, and all that posted are arguing some perceived slight against factual numbers and happenings. You should feel silly for arguing against me and not Sony, peep how you jumped down my throat, MS throat, and never refuted the facts from Sony.

"We all know exactly what you were doing."

Lol, so what you think I said was more important than what I said?
Ok, Here's the deal, go ahead and tell me what I said isn't true, correct, and factual, can you do that?

[Einhander1972]

Lightning77

You're criticizing my comment by making a comment that is nothing but an off topic insult...

[Lightning77]

Once again the truth hurts doesn't it?

You do this to yourself, always remember this.

[Einhander1972]

Lightning77

"Once again the truth hurts doesn't it?"

"You do this to yourself, always remember this."

ROFL

It's hilarious that you actually said "You do this to yourself, always remember this." I am honestly laughing!

Too funny!

What's your favorite game? I bet it's Baldur's Gate 3!

[repsahj]

this is thesoftware730 who will make a MS negative news into a positive one and make a positive PS news into a negative one. XD

[thesoftware730]

Explain to me how posting details of the very report Sony released is me making things negative. I never said sales were bad.

You guys are brimstone and fire, yet no one can disprove the facts, not one of you has done that yet...you know why right? Because you guys are arguing a nothing-burger, and only beefing about the details of the report.

[Abriael]

Ah yeah, PlayStation's making money hand over fist, but the headline should of course focus on the only negative element.

It's obvious that N4G's heat hunting and nowadays's crappy gaming journalism always focusing on drama, flamebait, and controversy, gave some people a rather distorted view of things. Pity.

[thesoftware730]

No, the headline should report YoY hardware decline and profit.

I admit that is objective because it's what I think and doesn't have to be relayed to my liking, but everything else I posted was only the details of the report that wasn't evident in the headline. It's standard practice and is done for almost every report of this type.

[Petebloodyonion]

To be fair, articles about Nintendo and Microsoft have reported a decrease in console sales in their titles.

"Xbox console sales continue to crater with massive 42% revenue drop"
https://arstechnica.com/gam...

"Nintendo's Switch Sales, Profit Slump as Successor Console Awaited"
https://www.marketscreener....

[Abriael]

@thesoftware730: There is no standard.

Headlines include what the journalist believes is most relevant to his readers (or in many cases, what the journalist believes is better clickbait/flamebait. Not in this case tho).

You're inventing rules that don't exist.

[darthv72]

Unit sales may be down, but still better than XB (obviously). And it is rather funny how Sony are now touting MAU which is another page from the MS book of number spinning.

Next thing you know, they will offer up day 1 first party releases in PS+ Ultra (new tier above premium). And people will say its the best thing since sliced bread.

[Outside_ofthe_Box]

This is first time Sony mentioned MAU?

"Next thing you know, they will offer up day 1 first party releases in PS+ Ultra (new tier above premium). And people will say its the best thing since sliced bread."

And then later add a new Ultra+ tier and remove day one games from the Ultra tier and people will say they didn't remove anything and still say it's the best thing since sliced bread.

[Chevalier]

Xbox missed Gamepass 3 years straight. Never hear you say anything negative about that though

[CrashMania]

*xbox sells terribly while PS5 and even switch moves big numbers*

Xbox Fans: Damn all consoles are struggling, times changing, MS' big failure the last 2 gens was secretely them playing 4D chess.

[Petebloodyonion]

Can you please help me understand why Sony's console sales being down by 21% versus the prior year is seen as positive, while similar declines for Nintendo and Microsoft are portrayed in a negative light? Just for your information, Nintendo sold 2.1 million Switch units, and despite the possibility of it surpassing PS2 in total console sales, I have not come across a single article highlighting this as a positive development.

Xbox console profit down by 42%
Switch console profit down by 46%
Playstation console profit down by 21%

[Einhander1972]

Petebloodyonion

But you are not looking at the whole picture.

In 2023 PS5 sold over 20m consoles the most consoles they sold in a single year since PS2. And what they are selling today is on par with what the PS4 was selling at this point in the generation.

Xbox is down 42% compared to a year in which they were down 25% compared to 2022, and Xbox is down significantly from Xbone which also sold less than the 360.

And I shouldn't need to explain Switch.

You guys are purposely removing vital context to make an argument that is not accurate when the full picture is revealed.

Also PlayStation actually reported profits which are up on their own sales, unlike Microsoft which reported revenue and the majority of their reported growth was simply from the purchase of ABK which itself was down.

So you guys are taking a misleading report from Microsoft then making misleading statements to make PlayStation look bad by comparison, when the truth is actually exactly the opposite.

[Petebloodyonion]

@Einhander1972
Missing the lowest forecast typically spells bad news for shareholders, and it's also unexpected that the peak sales period for consoles arrived much sooner than anticipated.

[Einhander1972]

Xbox console profit down by 42%
Switch console profit down by 46%
Playstation console profit down by 21%

You don't even know what we're talking about, those %'s are not profit.

Microsoft didn't even report profit, they report revenue which allows them to spout big numbers even when xbox is running at a loss. And that's on top of the deceptive nature in which they hide the costs for example the costs of acquiring ABK was not deducted from their reported revenue. PlayStation repeatedly reported the costs and losses related to their developer purchases.

PlayStation and Nintendo both report actual profit, which means they 100% for sure made money.

Profit
https://www.dictionary.com/...

Revenue
https://www.dictionary.com/...

Revenue
Revenue is how much money a business brings in.
Profit
Profit is how much money a business keeps after paying its bills.

Example:
If a company sells $100 worth of products and has $60 in expenses, its:
Revenue: $100
Profit: $40

[Petebloodyonion]

@Einhander1972
OMG you totally got me on this.
damn, now the whole dynamics of Sony's also selling less consoles is totally false because of?

Honestly, the deflection is notable. Microsoft has consistently used the same revenue metric, and it's common knowledge that console production costs haven't risen lately. Thus, Microsoft's use of this metric, which shows a 42% revenue drop from console sales (indicating fewer sales), or Sony's profit metric, both point to reduced console sales. Moreover, the metric of the number of consoles sold this year (2.4 million) divided by last year's figure (3.3 million) equals a 27.37% decline in consoles sold compared to last year. that actually would be a hint that cost when down as profit margin increased (- 21%) versus console sold margin.

[pwnmaster3000]

I never said you said it was bad, but your over here down playing 61 mil in 4 years like it’s an underwhelming achievement.

PlayStation is making good numbers on hardware sales, subscriptions and MAU. Let’s just congrats them and move on rather then trying to subliminally bring up Xbox. We all know you were trying to do it. Let’s not be fake.

[gold_drake]

that's an impressive number for 3 years and 9 months

[Petebloodyonion]

It's interesting to observe the narratives that emerge here. Last week, the story was that Xbox console revenue had plummeted by 42%, while software revenue had increased. The argument was that profits cannot be made without console sales, among comments, and that profit should be attributed solely to ABK.
https://n4g.com/news/261362...

In contrast, Nintendo's console profits dropped by 46% with 2.1 million units sold, sparking discussions about it's time to release the Switch 2 (Couldn't find the N4G article in the news feed)
https://www.marketscreener....

Today, the headline is that the PlayStation 5 console has sold 2.4 million units, reaching a total of 61.6 million. However, the article omitted the year-over-year console growth, which is down by 21%. Yet, the reaction is overwhelmingly positive, praising the PS5's performance.

[thesoftware730]

Pete, exactly...100% spot on.

The omitted facts of the profit and the decline of hardware sales were being filtered, and I pointed that out, plain and simple. I did that and now being told I'm trolling by posting details of the report. I didn't even blame Sony, or say anything negative about sales or anything, just gave way to facts about the report which is standard practice anytime a report is released.

They have to make this make sense.

[Hofstaderman]

Blah blah blah
XBOX series is undertracking against the Bone. Thats how bad XBOX is doing. No spinning can change this.

[Chevalier]

@Pete and Software 730

Xbox Gamepass missed targets 3 years straight. Spin that while your at it.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/0...

Playstation and Sony in general are up across the board and yet you guys want to spin a dumb narrative. So yes 💯 you guys are trying way too hard to knock Playstation down. Then you guys make up narratives to spin positives into Xbox. Trolls got to troll I guess

[Petebloodyonion]

"Xbox Gamepass missed targets 3 years straight. Spin that while your at it."
I don't recall saying anything positive in the MS financial statement article
And Gamepass missing targets 3 years straight was the reason why analysts were wondering if MS would dare put COD on GP.
https://n4g.com/news/261362...

"Playstation and Sony in general are up across ... Trolls got to troll I guess"
I only point out that all companies had console sales decline versus last year (Are you refuting that?) but since I'm trolling here's Gamespot title to both financial statements (they must also be trolling hard)
"PS5 Hardware Sales Are On The Decline, But Sony Is Still Looking Healthy"
https://www.gamespot.com/ar...
Microsoft " Xbox Posts Massive Hardware Sales Decline, But It's Not All Bad News"
https://www.gamespot.com/ar...

As for trying way hard to knock companies down, I have seen countless ppl trying to downplay MS statement by saying it's only because of ABK that revenues are up (despite that they exceed expectations) and trying to explain why Sony sold fewer consoles than predicted.

But hey who needs facts and sources anyway when we can have convictions :)

[Chevalier]

Who needs facts? The article literally said Playstation, Sony and all their divisions are up.

Hardware sales are down? I'm finding it hard to see how selling over 60 million consoles is a bad thing. Playstation is only down compared to a record year last year. But you want to scoff at hardware sales that are 'down' yet far head of their competitors?

As for Xbox being up. Yeah 💯 that is spin. We all know without the addition of Activision Blizzard revenue their increase was only 2% so no that's not a lot. Spinning it for more than that is idiotic. So yeah spin away.

We all know you and Software have backhanded comments here so let's stop pretending we don't know what you guys are doing. It's absolutely idiotic that you guys are playing dumb.

[Petebloodyonion]

"Who needs facts? The article literally said Playstation, Sony and all their divisions are up."
Hardware sales are down?

Have you checked the financial statement?

See Sony Presentation P11 :
(+) Impact of foreign exchange rates
·(+) Increase in sales of first-party game software titles
·(+) Increase in sales from network services, mainly PlayStation® Plus
·(ー) Decrease in sales of hardware due to a decrease in unit sales
https://www.sony.com/en/Son...

How about the supplement information P10:
Number of PS5 consoles sold Q1 2023 - 3.3 M vs Console sold in Q1 2024 - 2.3M meaning a decline of (-27%)
https://www.sony.com/en/Son...

But hey, I'm the idiot reposting info directly from Sony's presentation, while you're the genius claiming that Microsoft's statement is false without providing any evidence or that, unlike MS and Nintendo, it's good that Sony is having a console decline. At least I can agree with one thing - I feel dumb for wasting my time arguing with someone who can't produce a single credible source to support their statement.

[Chevalier]

"Microsoft's statement is false without providing any evidence"

Cool spinning narratives. Now go prove Xbox profits? Oh wait you go nothing about that right?

Revenues sure. That's more spin. But go ahead and show us how they didn't just have small gains when you remove Activision Blizzard.

Xbox fans got to downplay Playstation any chance they can right?

[derek]

CFO said as much. They are looking for growth in revenue and profits.

[Elda]

Seeing some of the comments has me laughing. Like they say .."Don't hate the player...hate the game" Sony PS for the win!

[anast]

Here, here

[Demetrius]

Well deserved sony, well deserved *piccolo voice lol fr tho that's wassup

[anast]

Grab a coffee and read this thread. There's some good stuff here.

[OlderGamer17]

All i see in this topic is Xbox fanboys downplaying Sony....go figure😁