PSPlus numbers look pretty flat, being at the same level as over a year ago. What's the go there?
Sony made this year 409,355 million yen in 'networking services' of their gaming division, vs 382,950 last year. If Plus stays flat, means they increased PS Now.
During Q1, Q2 and Q3 PS Plus was slightly higher YoY, but in Q4 was slightly down YoY. Sooo seems many people during Q4 instead of renewing Plus went to buy PS Now due to Spartacus to stack years of PS+ Premium.
Apparently Sony's CFO said Sony plans on investing $30 billion ($4 trillion yen) into strategic investments
Also, this is their progress so far on their 4th mid-range plan
Acquisitions budget increased to $30B?
The gaming division expects a 33% revenue growth YoY and a %10 down in operative income.
They expect a 56% increase in HW sales which may be sold at a lost, let's say include these PS5 and maybe some PSVR2.
Then they will get a bump in services with Spartacus. But seems there's a huge cost missing here:
How about the acquisition of one or multiple companies with many thousands of workers, like big publishers? $30B means now they can afford bigger stuff like Bandai Namco or Square Enix.
I'd be very surprised if we got a repeat of last generation. Things have massively changed after all.
The only big change we saw so far this gen it's the lack of chips, blocking Sony to break even more gaming history records for a console maker due to being severely supply constrained.
Sony keeps having more revenue, more MAU, more game subs, more 1st party sales, more total software sales etc. Sony has been performing better than ever and experiencing growth in all areas.
Sony will repeat this generation as market leader, specially once they get rid of the chips shortage. Nothing leads to think this will change (only the possibility of the chips issue getting worse instead of improving during the next couple of years).
It was obvious to anybody with a brain cells that gap between Xbox and PlayStation would shrink this gen.
PS4 outsold Xbox One 2,3:1 while Xbox had nonexisting first-party, higher-priced system and stain of DRM revel.
And anybody can see, that situation is different.
I still expect PS5 to be on top of Xbox, but it will probably be 105 million vs 85-90 million. Which is great for Microsoft since they are have Xbox as a part of their business strategy, not the only part.
XBO sold probably somewere between 50-60M while PS4 is a 117M and continues being sold (when allowed by the chips shortage).
Unlike the previous generation, all Xbox Series exclusive have been day one on PC and in GP. So gamers with an Xbox and a gaming PC this generation don't need to buy a console or the games.
PS5 has been improving and growing in every area (the most important one being revenue and profit, because allows to reinvest it to grow more) breaking many gaming history records set by PS4 even if severely supply constrained and many things point out that the demand for PS5 is huge worldwide.
I think that at the end of this generation the distance between Sony and Xbox won't have decreased until being almost tied, but instead will grow to almost 3:1 in hardware. Nothing leads to think it's going to be the case. When shipments allowed it, PS5 was in line to be the best selling home console ever. Only a more severe lack of cihps stopped this, new shipped units continue being sold out in minutes.
Regarding game subs I expect Sony to continue 2:1 in subbers compared to MS but with a profitable approach due to no full AAA games included there day one.
Looks like close gen between Sony and Microsoft.
There is no data suggesting this.
Did MS share their worldwide hardware sales? 1st party sales? Total game sales for their consoles? Profits/operative income of their gaming division?