PS5 Sells Worse Than PS4; Sony Wants to Release 10 Live-service Games by 2027

Today Sony released the financial report summarizing the third quarter of fiscal year 2021 (i.e. the period from October 1 to December 31). We learned some interesting things about PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 console sales figures. We also learned sine data on digital distribution in the PS Store, as well as the plans of this Japanese company for the coming years - they assume the release of 10 live-service games by the end of 2026.

Console sales

• In the period in question, 3.9 million units of PlayStation 5 and 200 thousand units of PS4 were delivered to stores worldwide.
• PS5 shipments were down 0.6 million from the same period last year (4.5 million consoles shipped), while PS4 shipments were down as much as 1.2 million (1.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2021).
• In total, Sony moved 17.2 million units of PlayStation 5 and 116.8 million PlayStation 4.
• Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notedthat thirteen months after the release of the PS4, Sony boasted 20.2 million units sold. PS5 is therefore lagging behind. The Japanese were supposed to surpass this number in the fourth quarter of 2021 financial year, but problems with the supply of consoles have reportedly reduced the estimate to 19.3 million.
• That 17.2 million is quite a bit more than the 12 million, however, which is roughly the number of Xbox Series X and S shipped to stores according to the latest data.

Digital distribution

• As of December 31, 2021, there were 48 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, up 0.6 million from the 47.4 million subscribers recorded at the end of 2020.
• PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4 apps sold 92.7 million copies in the third quarter of fiscal 2021, down 11.5 million from the 104.2 million sold in the same period of the previous fiscal year.
• 11.3 million of those 92.7 million copies were Sony's own apps - a decrease of 7.7 million from the third quarter of 2020 (9 million apps sold).
• Furthermore, 62 percent of the 92.7 million copies are digital versions of games - in the same period last year, this percentage was "only" 53 percent.
• Sony plans to to release 10 live-service games by the end of 2026. The means to achieve this goal is to be the acquisition of Bungie.
• One of these 10 projects is to be an unannounced multiplayer game from Naughty Dog (creators of The Last of Us and Uncharted).

• Sony
• stationary consoles
• console sales
• ninth generation
• Sony Interactive Entertainment
• PS5 / PlayStation 5
• games/services