PS5 Keeps Selling, but Interest in Games Wanes

Sony has boasted PlayStation 5 sales results for the first quarter of its 2022 fiscal year (i.e., the period from April 1 to June 31). By the way, it reported that PS5 has shipped 21.7 million units since its launch. In the second quarter alone (i.e., the period from April to June 2022), 2.4 million consoles were purchased, marginally better than a year ago.

Sony also provided a handful of additional information on the health of the video game segment, which did not do well in the past quarter.

1. As of June 31 PlayStation Plus had 47.3 million subscribers, which is one million more than in the identical period a year ago, but slightly less than in the previous fiscal quarter. The number of monthly active users (MAUs) also declined slightly, dropping from 105 million to 102 million accounts.
2. Quarterly software sales were weaker than in 2021, falling from 63.6 million to 47.1 million copies. Sony's own games also fared worse (down from 10.5 million to 6.4 million copies), which the company explains by a small number of new items. At the same time, the popularity of digital versions increased again, accounting for 79% of games sold in the past quarter (71% a year ago).
3. As a result revenue from the "Game & Network Services" section fell by 11.7%, and operating profit by as much as 30.5% (due in part to spending on the development of yet unreleased games).