Sony’s PlayStation business revenue fell 2% in the Q1 FY2022
Recently, Sony announced its first quarter financial report for the fiscal year 2022 (April 1, 2022, to June 30, 2022), showing that total revenue was 2,311.5 billion yen, a year-on-year increase of 2 %, and the operating profit was 307 billion yen, and the net profit was 218.2 billion yen. Excluding one-off factors such as equity transactions (for the current fiscal year and the previous fiscal year), operating profit increased by 5% year-on-year.
Specifically for the PlayStation business, revenue fell 2% year-on-year to 604.1 billion yen. The main reason is the weak game sales, which plummeted by 26%, and the increase in game development costs, which was partially offset by foreign exchange rate fluctuations. Sony blamed the problem on a lack of enough big PlayStation games this year, while players were spending less time playing them. According to statistics, the number of monthly active users on the PlayStation platform fell by 3% to 102 million, while the number of games played fell by 15%.
Hardware sales are doing better. The financial report shows that PlayStation 5 shipped 2.4 million units in the quarter, an increase of 4% year-on-year, and total sales as of June 30, 2022, were 21.7 million units. Still, Sony sees slower growth in the overall gaming market and has lowered its full-year profit forecast by 16%.
Sony is in a similar situation to rival Microsoft, which saw overall gaming revenue drop 7% in its most recent quarter, with hardware revenue down 11% and Xbox content and services revenue down 6%. Both Sony and Microsoft seem to be preparing for the possibility that revenue from the gaming business may continue to decline this year.
