Sony has released the final financial results for fiscal 2020, which ended March 31, 2021, which testify an impressive departure of PlayStation 5 despite problems related to stock shortages. The new console beat PS4 over the same period.
In the last quarter, 3.3 million PS5s and 1 million PS4 units were purchased from retailers around the world, which means the grand total for PS4 as of March 31 is 116 million units sold. The numbers concerning the new PS5, however, are more important: the console, on the market for about 4 months, has sold 7.8 million units since launch, beating the result recorded by PS4 in fiscal 2013 (7.6 million of units). These are record numbers for a console launch.
Other important data for the gaming division also come from services, which are on the rise.
Total subscribers to PlayStation Plus, the subscription service for PS4 and PS5 that allows you to play online, has risen to 47.6 million users. On the other hand, the number of active users on PlayStation Network has decreased compared to previous months, but there is a reason: PSN reached a peak of 114 million users last year, while this year it stops at “only” 109 , obviously due to the pandemic that has restarted some activities and removed potential players from recreational activities.
The forecast for the next fiscal year (between April 2021 and March 2022) mentions the expectation of another 9% increase in sales (243.7 billion yen) due to further expected growth in hardware sales in part. offset by an expected decrease in sales of non-first-party software.
The forecast for operating profit mentions a decrease of 17.2 billion yen, due to the decline in sales of third-party software mentioned above and rising game development costs, partly offset by the expected growth in revenues from games first party (coming soon Returnalwhile in June it will be the turn of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart that you can book with a discount coupon on Amazon) and an improvement in revenues from the hardware side. As it points out Twinfinitethis will likely happen due to an expected decrease in production costs for PS5.
In general, it was a very important year for Sony: the PSN alone, always “helped” by the Coronavirus pandemic, saw an increase of 36.4% compared to last year, with revenues of 17.32 billion.
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