PlayStation Studios Games & Network Sales Drop By 2% Over Last Year

Gaming is one of the biggest industries on the planet, without any doubt. It earns more money than industries like music and film combined, which is a remarkable milestone. However, the pandemic stopped every big industry from functioning well, and the gaming industry is no exception.

Delays in some major video game releases and console shortages were probably the most significant impacts of COVID-19. These delays and shortages are now manifesting themselves in the form of decreased profits for companies. Even major companies like Microsoft haven’t been exempted from this and suffered some losses.

Recently, Sony’s Q1 FY2022 Consolidated Financial Results finally came out today, and the company also reported major losses. Profits for the gaming goliath, PlayStation Studios, are down by up to 37% due to a lack of third-party game sales. However, even the first-party titles from the company are showing a downward trend, and that is concerning.

PlayStation Studios’ games and network sales have gone down by 2% over the last fiscal year. Details tell us that sales of all sorts of games have shown a decreasing trend. Non-first-party titles showed a decrease in sales this quarter, and that also includes add-on content.

Sony also cited this as one of the main reasons for its decrease in profits. On the other hand, first-party titles for PlayStation Studios have also not been doing so well, and their sales have also gone down. Both of these factors have contributed to the 2% decrease in PlayStation Studio’s revenues.

In another bad finding, the total player engagement has also been decreasing from last year. The average gameplay time for PlayStation players declined by almost 15% from the same quarter of 2021. Although the gameplay time in June did improve by 3% from May, it had a staggering decline from June 2021.

Players have spent almost 10% less time on PlayStation consoles in June 2022 than they did in June 2021. These numbers are much lower than the initial company forecast, so this is definitely a bit surprising. All is not doom and gloom in this financial report, however, as there have been some improvements, according to the Supplemental Information for the Consolidated Financial Results for the First Quarter Ended June 30, 2022.

PlayStation+ has been a major player and gained almost a million subscribers compared to last year. With the new tier system of PlayStation+ now in use, these numbers might increase even more. Overall, the first quarter of 2022 has been a bit disappointing for Sony, and this has mostly been due to the increasing costs of operation and production and the current economic inflation around the world.