Japanese console falls far short of summer forecasts due to severe stock shortages.
As we read in Sony’s latest fiscal results report, since the launch of PS5 in November 2020. 19.3 million consoles have been distributed.. This is a huge figure after only a year and a half, but it represents a growth of barely two million units versus the last known figure, making clear once again the current hardware stock problems.
To put the data in context, during the same period of the previous fiscal year the Japanese company sent to stores 3.3 million PlayStation 5; that is, 1.3 million more compared to the same consignment marketed during these winter months. In total, the multinational reports 11.5 million PS5s distributed in fiscal year 2021, well below the target of 14.8 million consoles promulgated in the summer.
In turn, PlayStation 4 has marketed one million consoles during this course compared to 5.7 million units placed on the market in 2020. Adding the data of PS5 and PlayStation 5, 12.5 million consoles were distributed in the last fiscal year, while in the same previous period the figure reached 13.5 million.
Bloomberg echoes the statements of Damian Thong, an analyst at Macquarie Capital Securities, who expects PlayStation to boost PS5 production to. regain ground in the coming months, even if that means giving up some of the gains. Recall that in several markets PS5 is already behind Xbox Series X|S, driven by the good reception of the cheaper model.
PlayStation Plus subscriptions fall.
The PS Plus subscriber figures are not positive either. With an eye on the reformulation of the service for the summer months, 47.4 million PS Plus users have been reported, down from 48 million reported the previous quarter and 47.6 million reached a year ago. In addition, PlayStation reports 106 million active players on its consoles, 106 million in the previous quarter.
Software sales did improve in the last quarter compared to the figure harvested a year earlier, pushed mainly by the performance of its first-party releases, with titles such as Gran Turismo 7. Thus, in the fourth quarter of 2021, 70.5 million games were sold (14.5 million from PlayStation Studios), when a year earlier 61.4 million games were reported (7.9 million from PlayStation Studios).
