PlayStation Reports Overall Profits Are Down 37 Percent In Q1

On the surface, things seem to be going pretty well for Sony's PlayStation 5. Lifetime PlayStation 5 shipments reached 21.7 million units during Sony’s most recent quarter. That's up 0.1 million compared to this time last year, and up 0.4 million compared to the the last quarter this year (ending March 31, 2022).

And yet, the same report that gave us this news also revealed that overall profits have decreased. This is due, mostly, to software sales.

We're currently in the middle of financial report season, with Microsoft announcing on the 27th of July that Xbox content and services revenue increased 2%. Sony, however, don't appear to be doing so well, as noted in a post from the company's Game & Network Services division. In the post, they reported that, despite the increase in shipments of consoles mentioned above, overall profits are down 37%.

According VGC, digital software sales account for 79% of PlayStation's profit. This decline was apparently expected, due to a decrease in sales of first and third-party titles, as well as a fall in DLC sales for third-party games. So while hardware sales have increased, software sales have dropped 26%.

The Verge reports that Sony blames this slump on a lack of PlayStation exclusive titles, but they predicted that "new game releases should also help the software sales side, with the highly anticipated God of War Ragnarök set to launch on November 9th and The Last of Us Part I remake on September 2nd."

Sony's new three-tiered PlayStation Plus membership system was introduced last month, but it's unlikely we'll be seeing the full results of that until the next quarterly report. It's possible that a lack of interest in gaming, as lockdown restrictions loosen, might also be a contributing factor.