Sony revealed that it has already acquired the necessary amount of chipsets for PS5 production in order to hit the console’s sales target for the fiscal year, amid a continuing global shortage in superconductors. Sony Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki revealed the information in a recent investor conference call along with the company’s 14.8 million unit sales target.
Currently, Sony is sitting at around 10.1 million PS5 unit sales as of June 30, 2021. In the UK, the PS5 was the country’s biggest console launch ever and set a sales record in Europe. As of right now, the console is still being sold at a loss, with Sony bolstering its revenue through subscription services and digital sales. However, Totoki notes that this will soon change as the company’s plans to achieve hardware profitability are “proceeding smoothly.”
Totoki clarified that the 14.8 million unit sales target comes from the previous record set by the PS4, which sold the same amount in its first year of release. Additionally, he notes that, while the total gameplay time for PS users decreased 32% year-on-year in the first quarter, the number was actually 18% higher than 2019.
In terms of game sales, it revealed that both Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and MLB The Show 21 had exceeded expectations and significantly contributed to the quarter’s profits. The CFO highlights that for MLB in particular, while the title had been sold simultaneously on other platforms, it had nonetheless found success similar to games such as Horizon Zero Dawn and Days Gone on PC.
Furthermore, Totoki said that the acquisitions of both Housemarque and Nixxes represented accelerated investments into new PlayStation Studios. Nixxes in particular offers “excellent technology for porting game software between different platforms such as PC,” which Totoki mentions will help all of its studios “in a horizontal manner.” It was previously confirmed that Nixxes was acquired to help PlayStation Studios’ teams develop PC ports of their games.
[Source: Twinfinite]
