Sony released its earnings report today, revealing that it shipped over 20 million PS4 consoles in the fiscal year that ended March 31. The popular console has been pulling in huge sales since its launch.
Rising competition for Sony?
This year has been the best for the gaming console with amazing sales. According to The Verge, the Japanese gaming giant has sold about 60 million PS4 consoles to date. The company announced that it sold over 40 million consoles through May 2016 and 50 million units by December. Sony expects to sell another 18 million units in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2018. The company gave no reasons why it expects sales to dip.
Sony’s games division reported operating profits of $1.21 billion (135.6 billion yen) on $14.7 billion (1.65 trillion yen) in revenue. Sales increased by 6.3%, whereas the profit of the division increased 52.9%. For the fiscal year that ended March 31, the gaming giant reported consolidated sales of 7,603 billion yen, with operating income of 288.7 billion yen. Last year, the company reported 294.2 billion yen in operating income and 8,105.7 billion in revenue.
For the year ending March 31, 2018, the company is predicting operating income of 170 billion yen and sales of 1,890 billion yen. The console maker is upbeat on sales of software and hardware. However, it won’t be easy for it to continue its momentum. Nintendo is making waves in the hardware market with impressive sales figures of the Switch (shipping 2.74 million units during the opening month). Microsoft is also gearing up for a comeback with the launch of the heavy duty Project Scorpio.
Sony gave no information on the separate performance of the PS4 Pro or sales of the PSVR beyond the 915,000 unit figure revealed a couple of months ago.
Will the PS4 beat PS2 numbers?
The PS4 will be completing more than four years in existence by March 31, 2018. The gaming console‘s sales growth is still well ahead of the PS2, which sold over 71 million units after over four years on the gaming market. It ended up selling more than 150 million after 11 years. However, it will not be easy for the PS4 to match the extended life of the PS2, which benefited from a price reduction to $129 in 2006, notes The Verge. However, the console is catching up fast to its predecessor, the PS3, which has sold more than 80 million units.
Meanwhile, experts are pretty optimistic on the PS4’s performance going forward. Recently, market research company SuperData estimated that the Japanese company will formally announce PS4 console sales of 60 million units once it released its fiscal earnings report on April 28. Joost Van Dreunen, chief executive officer of SuperData, said that the Xbox One platform has currently sold more than 33 million units around the world. If the data is true, it suggests a 2-to-1 ratio versus the Xbox One.
SuperData’s CEO told MCV, “With legacy publishers Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, and Ubisoft now moving into digital more aggressively, PlayStation stands to claim roughly two-thirds of the $7.8 billion digital console market.”
