It seems the big two console companies made big last year as Sony posted record sales of the Playstation 5, shipping a whopping 7.8 million units worldwide.
Tech giants were the big winners of 2020, especially those selling parts used by gamers. Sony is one of them, with the company calling it “Playstation’s best year ever.” The company sold 7.8 million units of the Playstation 5, all within a span of six months.
Sony earned $24.4 billion in revenues
Sony’s gaming business is reporting its best year in its decades-long existence in the industry. Even with the pandemic, the Japanese company earned as much as $24.4 billion in revenues through its Games and Network Services division.
This was Sony's best year ever for its Game & Network services division.
The Game & Network Services segment reported revenue of $24.4 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021.
The increase was due to strong software and services sales + PS5 launch impact. pic.twitter.com/MBmXo9p47H
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) April 28, 2021
Sony also profits close to $3.2 billion for their fiscal year, which ended last March 31, 2021. Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad made sense of these numbers, showing a graph that shows the record numbers.
“This was Sony’s best year ever for its Game & Network services division,” said Ahmad. “The Game & Network Services segment reported revenue of $24.4 billion for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021. The increase was due to strong software and services sales + PS5 launch impact.”
3.3 million units of the PS5 shipped from the start of the year until March 31. Doing simple math, this equates to a total of 4.5 million units shipped over the holidays. This is impressive, considering the console shipped only in November 12.
Sony profits by “strategic price points”
While the Playstation 5 is having a field day with its sales, everything is more complicated than simple numbers. By analyst estimates, Sony was even dragged down by the low introductory prices of the console.
Sony's game division operating income dragged down by 'loss resulting from strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were set lower than the manufacturing costs'
Standard practice at the start of a console cycle. Improved content & services rev help smooth over the impact pic.twitter.com/jKNQu0oLQV
— Piers Harding-Rolls (@PiersHR) April 28, 2021
“Sony’s game division operating income dragged down by ‘loss resulting from strategic price points for PS5 hardware that were set lower than the manufacturing costs’,” says Piers Harding-Rolls, a games industry analyst for Ampere Analysis.
“Standard practice at the start of a console cycle. Improved content & services rev help smooth over the impact.”
Sony sold as many as 339 million games during the last fiscal year, with 58.4 million first-party titles sold. The Playstation 4 has now sold 115.9 million units. 7.6 million of those units shipped out from the last quarter alone.
All these figures tell that Sony has now broken the gain-loss cycle they had since the inception of the Playstation. Sony is still making records, with Microsoft being in the similar vein as their rivals.
Featured image courtesy of Playstation/Youtube Screenshot