When Sony announced that lifetime shipments of the PlayStation 5 exceeded 65 million units in the most recent quarter, Sony President Hiroki Totoki said the company is focused on core single-player games for the future.
Single-player games such as Sony’s God of War have been a staple of Sony’s successful consoles, but the company is said to have spent eight years developing them and cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce. We experimented with live service games such as “Concord”. The game was released this year, but was a failure, and Sony closed down the Firewalk Studios division that produced the game.
Totoki, who is also COO and CFO, said on a conference call with analysts that PlayStation needs to do more detailed checks and balances, including more user testing, to prevent disasters like Concord. Ta. In contrast to that failure, Arrowhead’s third-party game, Helldivers 2, was a live service game that sold 12 million copies earlier this year.
“We need more iterations of these gates to catch and determine user acceptance. We need more information to allow for healthier decisions…Looking back I think we need to go back to basics and really strengthen them,” Totoki said.
At the same time, Sony executives said in a conference call with analysts that they plan to release major single-player titles every year starting next year, starting with Ghost of Yourei, the sequel to the blockbuster hit Ghost of Tsushima. He said that there is. from now on.
For the second fiscal quarter ended September 30, Sony reported that its gaming and network services division’s revenue increased 12% to $7.01 billion, and operating profit increased 2.8 times year over year. The strong quarter was driven by third-party software sales, while hardware sales were weak. Sony raised its forecast to $29.4 billion and also expected operating profit to increase.
Sony said PlayStation had 116 million monthly active users, an 8% increase year over year. Total play time also increased by 14% compared to the same month last year. PlayStation Plus grew 18% year-over-year, with average revenue per user also increasing.
Third-party software saw strong sales growth due to the contribution of solid franchise titles, as well as new intellectual property hits such as new sports titles and Chinese action RPG titles. I think it’s EA Sports College Football and Black Myth Wukong.
Astro Bot sold 1.5 million copies, but 37% of those who bought Astro Bot hadn’t bought a Sony first-party title in the past two years.
According to Sony, the percentage of young people and families who purchase this title is much higher than other titles, and this title is contributing greatly to the expansion of the user base.
Regarding the future, Mr. Totoki said, “During the period of the current mid-range plan, we would like to build an optimal title portfolio that combines single-player games, which are our strength and have a high predictability of hits with proven IP, and live streaming. I’m thinking about it,” he said. A service game that pursues upside while taking a certain amount of risk upon release. ”
In the studio business, sales and profits are expected to decline in the second half of this fiscal year compared to the same period last year, when “Spider-Man 2” and “Helldivers 2” performed well.
Hit. However, Sony said it is making steady progress in developing new titles and improving the game process for live services.
