In brief: PlayStation 5 consoles are not selling as well as Sony predicted right now. The Japanese tech giant expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 units than forecast in its next financial year, which runs from April 2024 to March 31, 2025. It also confirmed that there will be no sequels or updates to its “major existing franchise titles” during this time.
Sony’s gaming division generated a record amount of revenue during the three months ending December 31, 2023 – its third fiscal quarter. The company sold 8.2 million PlayStation 5 consoles, raising the lifetime total to 54.7 million. The PS5 is now 15th on the list of best-selling consoles of all time, sitting between the SNES (49.1 million) and Xbox One (58 million).
But the PlayStation 5’s sales for the financial year so far are 16.4 million, which means it would need to sell almost ten million more units in the final quarter to reach Sony’s original target of 25 million. As such, the company has revised its yearly target down by 4 million to 21 million units.
The original PlayStation 5 model will no longer be sold once existing stock is used up, leaving the Slim model that launched in November as the sole PS5.
Sony has also revised its fiscal year sales forecast for the gaming division, reducing it by 210 billion yen to 4.15 trillion yen. This is partly attributed to a decrease in first-party sales and losses from hardware due to promotions.
PlayStation 5 owners looking forward to new games related to existing first-party titles such as God of War or Spider-Man arriving before April next year had their hopes dashed by Sony. “Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality productions and producing live service games. But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year,” the company said.
That doesn’t mean there will be no new IPs, of course, just no sequels to first-party titles.
There was some good news for Sony in its quarterly financial report. The PlayStation Network’s monthly active users reached a record high of 123 million, up 11 million YoY, and overall software sales for the PS5 and PS4 were up 3.2 million to 89.7 million. It was another quarter where the share of digital-edition sales increased, up to 66% compared to 62% the previous year.
Sony is reportedly set to launch the PlayStation 5 Pro later in 2024. According to rumors, it will offer a 50% to 60% upgrade in rasterization performance while doubling ray tracing performance. The Pro model is also expected to feature hardware-based upscaling tech similar to DLSS.