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Sony FY22Q1 Results (2.4 million sold through)

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Three

Member
Why would Software sales go down.

The PS4 and PS5 are still getting games and id think the hype of people picking up new consoles knowing new games are coming out would have them buying more software?

Dont really care about hardware selling more doesnt matter too much as long as the hardware is still selling at a loss.
It is a big drop and one I suspect they thought would be offset more by services but wasn't as much as they hoped. It's worth mentioning that SW sales have been coming down industry wide month after month regardless but not by the amount here.
 
I think you are being a little too optimistic with your numbers there. They announced that they had sold more than 20m units. That could be 20.5m, or 21m, etc. Total sales should be 21.7m, so if for example when they made that announcement, PS5 was sitting at 20.7m sold, then that means 1 million sold in June.
While obviously more than 20m can mean any number >20, I find a little improbable that they didn't decide to announce 21 millions, if they actually reached that figure at the moment of the statement.
Moreover, I don't think that the announcement has been done in any special occasion (correct me if I'm wrong), so I tend to believe that it means that the 20 millions had just been surpassed
 
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Unknown?

Member
Literally right now as we discuss; PS5 sold nearly 2 million in June alone. Makes sense as stock has been lasting for longest period I've ever witnessed.
One moth isn't a long enough trend for stability and even then you can't walk into a store and see them sitting on shelves.
 

Jaybe

Member
Good to see they are effectively flat as the Covid boom in engagement is getting lapped.
Nice to see more detailed numbers including subscriptions and hardware and software units. I’m just amazed at the share of ‘add-on content’ to the business.
 

KingT731

Member
So PS Software sales being down tells us that...to nobody's surprise despite the fake outrage....people don't want the PS4 versions of these new games and buy them when they get a PS5.
 
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Sales for PS5 are up 100K yoy and 400K above the previous quarter but down 500K on PS4's Q1 full second fiscal year. I really hope Sony are stockpiling PS5's for a massive 8m to 9m Q3 holiday to get close to their projection. They didn't stockpile any PS5's at all last year with holiday quarter sales being slightly above regular quarter sales. Also now that Sony hasn't updated PS4 sales means it sold less than 100K and is dead, killed by Sony themselves.


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MScarpa

Member
CC is constant, you can apply it to all subdivisions. Not sure what your point is.

You can, but it's highly misleading when the currencies had a big change in value. That's where CC comes into play.

When roughly 90% of your revenue comes from outside of your main currency, which is the case with Playstation, then it's not that simple. They notice this when it comes to spending money on game development and hardware manufacturing, which is almost entirely outside of Japan. Suddenly everything is much more expensive. So they might make more revenue on paper, but since the currency is devalued, they also have to spend more money than before.
He doesn't get it man. smh
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
So Sony Gaming division sales -2%, despite +4% more hardware unit sales. Sony got a giant currency exchange benefit too (FX). As OP stated, if it wasn't for that they'd be around -11%.

Interestingly, PS Plus subs even dropped vs. previous quarter even though they released the new PS Plus Tiers in June.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Software sales down 24% despite hardware sales being up. I hope this is a wake up call to not just Sony and Microsoft but all publishers who think they can coast on dated last gen game design and ideas. It's time to innovate and offer fresh/new experiences. We have been playing the same games designed around most of the same constraints since 2005.

 

ANIMAL1975

Member
This makes no sense. The digital % is skewed by games that are digital only (games like Sifu for example that has no physical release) and games from PSN sales that are obviously all digital.

The conversation around digital sales split at the launch of a new retail game is an entirely different thing.

To put it as politely as possible, it’s quite embarrassing for you to question the higher digital share on Xbox given the prevalence of the discless Xbox Series S. What were you thinking?!

This makes no sense. The digital % is skewed by games that are digital only (games like Sifu for example that has no physical release) and games from PSN sales that are obviously all digital.

The conversation around digital sales split at the launch of a new retail game is an entirely different thing.

To put it as politely as possible, it’s quite embarrassing for you to question the higher digital share on Xbox given the prevalence of the discless Xbox Series S. What were you thinking?!
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So you telling me that this massive difference in sales from an intire quarter, (and see the numbers from 2021 fiscal in the same trend), are all because of digital only games and psn sales that most of the time people complain about being the same or more expensive than boxed games at physical stores lol.
Dude i bought a boxed game in 2014 for my son, my ps4 came with Killzone sf. End of story _ all digital library since _ Playstation user base is following the same digital route no matter what you think or gafs little ecosystem of ps fans who only buy boxed.
So, in the end, the conversation around digital sales split at the launch of new games in the UK sharts is an intirely pointless thing if you don't have hard numbers for both sides.

Finally, and to put it as politely as possible, what is really embarrassing is you taking this shit so seriously and getting so triggered, almost offended, to the point of saying shit like this:

"To put it as politely as possible, it’s quite embarrassing for you to question the higher digital share on Xbox"

Don't know why i even bother to answer

sensible chuckle GIF
 

Three

Member
He doesn't get it man. smh
Get what? Using CC is meaningless here when you have unit data trends with your actual revenue and its even meaningless when you have no regional data to go with it. What can you use it for?

"We would have made more USD but we had to sell products abroad for cheaper than last year"

a lot of companies actually increase prices with FX to maintain revenue because real revenue is real revenue. CC revenue here is brought up to make a lower or higher revenue look worse or better only.

Still hasn't provided the CC hardware revenue value either because it isn't reported. Should be easy enough to do if it were.
 

Lognor

Banned
No surprises here. A lot of things down (revenue down, software sales, etc). Totally expected. We saw similar results from Microsoft.
 
Sounds like a case of play stupid games win stupid prizes to me. Once we saw the new 85€ price tag per game, my friends and I started buying disk versions of new games and sharing them between us instead. Infinite $aving$$$$$$!!1

I've owned a ps4 since they released and never purchased a disk game throughout the entire generation. Now, most of the people I know with ps5s are sharing disks between em.

What can I say other than vote with your wallets, I hope more people follow suit and show em the finger.

Get fucked.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
What's interesting to me is that the HFW, GT7 and Ghostwire Tokyo were all big PS exclusives released last quarter and shouldve continued to sell as the PS5s filled the shelves. Instead we saw a 26% decline from last year when Returnal sold just 500k and Ratchet which sold a decent 1 million copies in a month. Still, you would think that a HFW, a sequel to a game that sold 20 million, and GT7, a sequel to a game with nearly 15 million users, would have better legs than this.

Did these three exclusives not match Returnal and Ratchet's 1.5 million haul in their second quarter? Ghostwire actually released late March. How much did that sell?

HFW is being bundled in with every playstation. Surely that game's 'sales' should be in the millions now. So where is this 26% drop coming from? Third parties? I dont remember third parties releasing any major games in April-June of last year.
 
What's interesting to me is that the HFW, GT7 and Ghostwire Tokyo were all big PS exclusives released last quarter and shouldve continued to sell as the PS5s filled the shelves. Instead we saw a 26% decline from last year when Returnal sold just 500k and Ratchet which sold a decent 1 million copies in a month. Still, you would think that a HFW, a sequel to a game that sold 20 million, and GT7, a sequel to a game with nearly 15 million users, would have better legs than this.

Did these three exclusives not match Returnal and Ratchet's 1.5 million haul in their second quarter? Ghostwire actually released late March. How much did that sell?

HFW is being bundled in with every playstation. Surely that game's 'sales' should be in the millions now. So where is this 26% drop coming from? Third parties? I dont remember third parties releasing any major games in April-June of last year.
Ghostwire Tokyo is not a first party game. Bethesda is publishing the game.
But MLB The Show 2022 launched in April.
That's the biggest first party game of the quarter.
 
Ha. Will be interesting to see Nintendo's results. If they're down too ...

Newer gamers switching to mobile? PC? The old guard moving on..?

Down in profit? Probably not by much. I think a lot of Sony's profit being down isn't just to (up until last month, anyway) low PS5 shipments, but also production costs associated with PSVR2 and maybe the Bungie acquisition being accounted for? I don't know how these companies do that type of accounting.

More interesting is that revenue was only down by 2%, that's the smallest revenue drop we've seen from any of the platform holders yet. I could go off from here and try saying this would mean Xbox's profits were down even more than 30% but while we never get their profit numbers, I don't think they took too big a hit tbh IF it's true PlayStation's are the result of some seriously short supply (Microsoft were able to ramp up Series X availability earlier this year and Series S is always plentifully available), PSVR2 (Microsoft isn't making a VR headset), and Bungie (will be interesting to see if the ABK acquisition result in some reported drops for Xbox's profits but more likely MS will just find a way to ease that piecemeal across the entire company's profits taking that impact instead).

Going to be really good to see their numbers for the rest of this year, knowing supply will be up by a lot and big software releases are literally right around the corner.
 
What's interesting to me is that the HFW, GT7 and Ghostwire Tokyo were all big PS exclusives released last quarter and shouldve continued to sell as the PS5s filled the shelves. Instead we saw a 26% decline from last year when Returnal sold just 500k and Ratchet which sold a decent 1 million copies in a month. Still, you would think that a HFW, a sequel to a game that sold 20 million, and GT7, a sequel to a game with nearly 15 million users, would have better legs than this.

Did these three exclusives not match Returnal and Ratchet's 1.5 million haul in their second quarter? Ghostwire actually released late March. How much did that sell?

HFW is being bundled in with every playstation. Surely that game's 'sales' should be in the millions now. So where is this 26% drop coming from? Third parties? I dont remember third parties releasing any major games in April-June of last year.

I am very confused on how software sales are down. GT7, HFW, ER, plus all those PC ports like GoW

My only real guess is that third party sales are down massively
 
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Ozriel

M$FT
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So you telling me that this massive difference in sales from an intire quarter, (and see the numbers from 2021 fiscal in the same trend), are all because of digital only games and psn sales that most of the time people complain about being the same or more expensive than boxed games at physical stores lol.
Dude i bought a boxed game in 2014 for my son, my ps4 came with Killzone sf. End of story _ all digital library since _ Playstation user base is following the same digital route no matter what you think or gafs little ecosystem of ps fans who only buy boxed.
So, in the end, the conversation around digital sales split at the launch of new games in the UK sharts is an intirely pointless thing if you don't have hard numbers for both sides.

Finally, and to put it as politely as possible, what is really embarrassing is you taking this shit so seriously and getting so triggered, almost offended, to the point of saying shit like this:

"To put it as politely as possible, it’s quite embarrassing for you to question the higher digital share on Xbox"

Don't know why i even bother to answer

sensible chuckle GIF

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Keep in mind that they probably lost first party unit sales to their new subscription services this quarter. I suspect they lost Returnal, Demon souls and especially Miles Morales sales to people getting it on the subscription.
Yes also that indeed. But numbers don't lie. Their Microsoft-like new strategy is a failure. I don't think Nintendo are 40% down on their own games, do they?
 
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tmlDan

Member
So Sony Gaming division sales -2%, despite +4% more hardware unit sales. Sony got a giant currency exchange benefit too (FX). As OP stated, if it wasn't for that they'd be around -11%.

Interestingly, PS Plus subs even dropped vs. previous quarter even though they released the new PS Plus Tiers in June.
expect them to all suffer even more as inflation increases and living gets more difficult.

It's only the beginning as interest rates have been going up dramatically over the last month and a half in NA.

Esp in Canada, I expect some people to lose their houses as mortgage revaluations take hold and people have to pay 40% more a month.

This will likely impact all sub services.
I am very confused on how software sales are down. GT7, HFW, ER, plus all those PC ports like GoW

My only real guess is that third party sales are down massively
third party sales are down dramatically and none of those games came out last quarter, they were in Q4 of last year. Most game sales come in the first 2-3 weeks.
 

Woopah

Member
So PS Software sales being down tells us that...to nobody's surprise despite the fake outrage....people don't want the PS4 versions of these new games and buy them when they get a PS5.
How do these numbers show that?
Get what? Using CC is meaningless here when you have unit data trends with your actual revenue and its even meaningless when you have no regional data to go with it. What can you use it for?

"We would have made more USD but we had to sell products abroad for cheaper than last year"

a lot of companies actually increase prices with FX to maintain revenue because real revenue is real revenue. CC revenue here is brought up to make a lower or higher revenue look worse or better only.

Still hasn't provided the CC hardware revenue value either because it isn't reported. Should be easy enough to do if it were.
Constant currency is a better judge of a company's performance as it removes the impact of exchange rates. That's why shareholders like to see it.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
He's cherry picking the single number that looks good on paper but actually isn't good at all, when you consider that the real increase in hardware is around 4% and that Q1 '21 was already pretty bad with only 2.3m consoles sold.

At least we know how many PS5s Sony sold Q1 '21.......
 
I am very confused on how software sales are down. GT7, HFW, ER, plus all those PC ports like GoW

My only real guess is that third party sales are down massively

They mention in the report it's due to lack of 1P releases software-wise. Keep in mind the quarter started in April and ended at the conclusion of June, and I don't think Sony had any 1P releases that quarter outside of maybe MLB The Show '22.

GT7, HFW, Elden Ring, GOW PC ports etc. were all mainly counted towards Q4 2021 FY, not Q1 2022 FY.

Could talk about the FX impact that Sony has shared with us at the segment level but ehh.

What's FX?

Keep in mind that they probably lost first party unit sales to their new subscription services this quarter. I suspect they lost Returnal, Demon souls and especially Miles Morales sales to people getting it on the subscription.

TBF, it's not like Returnal or even Demon's Souls Remake were selling super-big amounts after their first few months, tho Demon's Souls Remake maybe could've had a bigger bump if it wasn't in PS+. But keep in mind these results are for April-June and the new PS+ only launched in the middle of June, so I doubt it affected any of those three games sales-wise that much.

The only big new 1P game Sony had in that period was MLB The Show '22.

Yes also that indeed. But numbers don't lie. Their Microsoft-like new strategy is a failure. I don't think Nintendo are 40% down on their own games, do they?

Ridiculous assertation. Not that Sony are as dependent on this type of model as Microsoft but...they just launched the revamped PS+ in the middle of June, these results account for beginning of April up to the end of June. How do you denote a revamped service a "failure" after only two weeks? Did GamePass have an explosion of subs or revenue in a span of two weeks (could you even account for it if it did, considering MS never share its revenue or profit amounts and only reports on sub numbers once a year?).

Nintendo's profit is probably not down by as much (or Microsoft's for that matter), but they also didn't spend money on a big acquisition recently, don't have a VR device in development they're preparing to bring to market, don't produce any big AAA games requiring large budgets, and price-gouge their fanbase by keeping costs of their 1P software artificially high (yet people want to complain about $70 games being anti-consumer?).

There are a lot of factors to consider when looking at these numbers.
 
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tmlDan

Member
Who in their right mind, seeing the lowest rates maybe ever, didn't get a fixed rate mortgage?
I agree with you, but a lot took variable rates because they didnt expect the bank to increase interest rates so dramatically. They increased it by a point percentage in a month and a half...its nuts.
 

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
Thx for the clarification, ignore me haha.

Ah so Ms could have sold more series x last year but more series s this year at lower revenue. Just trying to get my head around how Microsoft is ahead of ps5 in sales but I guess that's just us and UK sales vs sonys worldwide.

Ps5 seems to be suffering vs ps4 though. I wonder if it will ever catch back up. Software is massively down and overall numbers seem to be taking a hit. They need to get their supply chain in order ASAP.

When is this lie going to end? People need to pay more attention to the words these execs say. MS is "NOT" ahead of the PS5 in sales in NA or the UK.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
Ghostwire Tokyo is not a first party game. Bethesda is publishing the game.
But MLB The Show 2022 launched in April.
That's the biggest first party game of the quarter.
Wait. I didnt realize that these were PS only figures. I thought they were including all third party data. So if we are to look at the 302,418 million yen figure, that is just for first party software? highly doubt it. Thats $2.5 billion.

Edit: It's not. We can look at the first party breakdown below. Total sales were 47 million. First party sales were only 6.4 million. So MLB The Show, HFW, GT7, GOW PC and all other legacy PS5 titles combined to sell just 6.4 million compared to 10.5 million last year. Those are abysmal numbers. HFW was bundled with every Playstation 5 so thats 2.4 million right there.

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Wait. I didnt realize that these were PS only figures. I thought they were including all third party data. So if we are to look at the 302,418 million yen figure, that is just for first party software? highly doubt it. Thats $2.5 billion.

JhpAicF.png
2.269b.

And highly doubt that is just first party since 2.269b divided by 6,400,000 (the first party units in the same image) is a per unit value of $354.53.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Ps5 is going to need to have a huge Xmas or I feel it will never catch the ps4....its going to be tough too as we enter this worldwide recession. They need atleast a 4 to 5 million quarter for this one but I think that's going to be tough. We will see.
 
I agree with you, but a lot took variable rates because they didnt expect the bank to increase interest rates so dramatically. They increased it by a point percentage in a month and a half...its nuts.
Maybe in Canada. I think the general consensus in the US was that you took the fixed rate no matter what because few expected these rates to last.

I know a few brokers and realtors and from our conversations I doubt even 1% went for variable rates.
 

reksveks

Member
What's FX?
Currency exchange (forex)

Basically because the yen weakened since last year, for one dollars worth of revenue they were able to report an additional twenty jpy. The same happens across each currency/market.

The total impact of that across GNS (all revenue streams and markets) for Sony in the previous quarter was an additional 57.9bn jpy relative to what they would generate previously.

The one downside is that alot of Sony's costs are in usd as well so it becomes more expensive to make stuff and pay devs relatively to the yen.
 

Elios83

Member
I am very confused on how software sales are down. GT7, HFW, ER, plus all those PC ports like GoW

My only real guess is that third party sales are down massively
It's written in the slides.
Third party sales have declined (last year big games like RE Village were released).
Add-on sales were poor, people are spending less time playing games.
First party sales declined (last year MLB, Returnal, R&C and Days Gone PC were released, this year they have just MLB and continued sales of old titles, a few even bundled?)

The situation is kinda obvious, people are buying less games because covid restrictions are over and they can return to a normal life + the development pipeline is totally fucked up at most big publishers, everything is delayed, at least they can be super happy they have GOW and TLOU Remake coming later this year otherwise it would be a barren land.
Hoping that other big third party titles like Harry Potter aren't delayed last minute as well.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I am very confused on how software sales are down. GT7, HFW, ER, plus all those PC ports like GoW

My only real guess is that third party sales are down massively
Look at the chart above. Sony actually provided first party sales. They are down a massive 40% from last year. 6.4 million vs 10.5 million. And last year saw underwhelming numbers for Returnal (500k) and Ratchet 1 million. That means the rest of the sales came from Miles, Demon Souls, MLB The Show and other legacy first party titles.

This time around HFW was bundled with every playstation (which sony counts as sales) and they still only managed to sell almost half as many copies as they did last year. I wouldve expected the second quarter of HFW and GT7 to be far better than Ratchet and Returnals 1.5 million haul. The drop from last quarter is even more stark. 14 million vs 6 million so GT7, GOW PC and HFW sales were front loaded for sure.

I dont want to say I told you so but I did say that these cross gen games are going to feel dated in 2022. I wonder if thats contributing to slow sales we typically only see in the tail end of the generation. This is supposed to be the year when gamers are buying games in droves. IIRC, Witcher 3 released in May 2015 and sold millions. GTA4 in April 2008 also sold millions. Same period after launch.
 

Three

Member
How do these numbers show that?

Constant currency is a better judge of a company's performance as it removes the impact of exchange rates. That's why shareholders like to see it.
It only removes fluctuations to show performance of that company vs the previous year when you dont have any numbers for volume and can maybe dechiper it but even then you don't have any regional data with CC.
Define what performance it shows in this context? In this case it would simply be making less revenue and showing a decrease as less of a decrease.
 
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tmlDan

Member
Maybe in Canada. I think the general consensus in the US was that you took the fixed rate no matter what because few expected these rates to last.

I know a few brokers and realtors and from our conversations I doubt even 1% went for variable rates.
The US just has wayyyy better deals than in Canada, they kind of fuck us on all fronts here.

Buying a Home in the US is just much easier.
 
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