Sony posts record profits and biggest PlayStation 5 sales in 2022
Sony made a record profit of more than 1,208 billion yen in the past financial year 2022, equivalent to roughly 8.08 billion euros. The company owes this partly to the sale of 19.1 million PlayStation 5 consoles. Game sales were somewhat disappointing in 2022.
Only sold in the first quarter of 2023, or the last quarter of fiscal year 2022 Sony in its own words 6.3 million PlayStation 5s. That is more than three times as many units as in the same quarter last year; that period was plagued by supply problems. The current record was set at the end of 2022 with 7.1 million units sold. The company expects to sell another 25 million units of the respective console in the current fiscal year. Coo Hiroki Totoki says in a call that he is not optimistic about this forecast, because a ‘sluggish European economy and uncertainty in the Chinese economy’ could cause lower demand among consumers, he said. quotes Bloomberg.
Another Sony executive acknowledged during the call that “the momentum of software, the lucrative part of the gaming industry, remains weak.” The company reports that the number of active users of PlayStation consoles increased by 2.3 million accounts, but the number of PlayStation Network users is said to have fallen slightly compared to the previous quarter to 108 million active users. The number of PlayStation Plus subscribers increased slightly to 47.4 million subscribers.
About the entire company achieved Sony Group Corporation an operating income of more than 8 billion euros, which is several tens of millions of euros more than in the 2021 financial year. The company’s total turnover increased by 16 percent. The difference between the higher turnover and the stagnant profit can partly be explained by the costs of the Bungie acquisition. This cost item was somewhat compensated with an increase in the profit of the camera division by more than 26 percent and just under 20 percent higher profit of the Music department.
Sony has set a fairly sober forecast for the 2023 financial year, which ends in March 2024. The company expects to achieve roughly the same turnover, but thinks it will have to compromise on profits.
Sony annual figures by segment for FY2022. Source: Sony