Sony may well have revealed that console sales are far less important to their annual revenue than they used to be, but that doesn’t mean they’re giving up on PlayStation 5 sales by any means. The platform holder aims to achieve more than 50% market share in console games revenue with their latest console. They aim to do this by selling more than 23 million consoles during the 2022 financial year.
The PlayStation 5 console had already had a record breaking launch, shipping 7.8 million units since November. Sony is now looking to have another record breaking “year two” for a console, hoping to sell more than the 14.8 million units shifted by the PlayStation 4 console in its second year. In fiscal year 22, the company then hopes to have its best ever year of console sales. This would mean selling around 23 million units to beat the record set by the original PlayStation in 1998 with 22.6 million units.
Sony doesn’t necessarily have to rely on console sales to get that prized 50% market share, though. Game sales and services also count towards that total, and the company aims to “reach millions of gamers beyond our platforms“. The amount of money spent on PS5 games between console launch and the end of the corresponding fiscal year increased by 15% when compared to PS4 games during the same period. The company had already revealed sales of full games had decreased slightly but add-on sales had increased dramatically, mainly due to the number of games players can access through PlayStation Now and the PlayStation Plus Instant Games Collection.
By the end of March 2021, PlayStation Plus had reached 47.6 million subscribers. Of those people, only 40% subscribe to the service so they can play online. The next biggest group of people are the 30% that subscribe for the free games. Of the rest, 18% do so to get the PS+ exclusive discounts and offers on the PlayStation Store while 12% subscribe for cloud save functionality. Meanwhile, PlayStation Now has 3.2 million users, a significant increase since the service’s relaunch in October 2019.
Despite their ambitions, the PlayStation 4 is still expected to make up 70% of the revenue from the PlayStation Store during 2021 as they aim to create the “longest ever tail” for a console. With 7.1 million active monthly users on the PS4, there’s still a significant number of players to satisfy. Meanwhile, the PS5 has 8.6 million monthly active users thanks to multiple accounts on a single console, so they’re making headway to reaching that coveted 50% market share. With the games market expected to reach a value of $88 billion in 2025, that’s a significant chunk of cash.
[Source: Sony]
