Sony PlayStation: Gamers Are Spending More on Titles They Own Instead of Buying New Ones

Last week, Sony revealed the financial results for its fiscal year 2022 which ended on March 31. It gave us quite an insight into the consumer trends of Sony’s audience and how the company is doing in terms of sales and revenue.

The highlights, however, are that the sale pattern shows that while consumers continue to endorse PlayStation hardware, especially the PS4 and PS5 consoles, its game unit sales have dropped. Having said that, its game sales are driven by the revenue from “first-party titles on platforms other than PlayStation consoles.” Here are more details on these developments.

Sony’s game software sales are high, but with less game unit sales

Sony published the document as the “Supplemental Information” for the Consolidated Financial Results on April 28. Here, one can see that for both FY21, and FY22, game software sales are consistently higher than hardware sales. Digital software and add on content sales take the lead in this department. Tweaktown’s Derek Strickland provides a further angle to this, that while the combined physical and digital software sales of Sony for FY22 are higher than FY21, they are a little lower than FY20. But more importantly, “in terms of volume, game unit sales are definitely lower than last year.” He explains that game unit sales have been on a downward trend since FY20, or in other words, since the launch of the PS5.

In terms of volume, game unit sales are definitely lower than last year.

Sony sold 264.2 million combined PS4 and PS5 games in FY22, down 39 million units.

Game unit sales have been on a downward trend since FY20, a period which includes the PS5’s launch (PS5 released in Q3’20) pic.twitter.com/3nm6uNauW1

— Derek Strickland (@DeekeTweak) April 29, 2023

On the other hand, consoles revenues continue to see a positive trend upwards, driven by PS4 and PS5 sales, reaching an all-time high in FY22. So, the question that naturally follows is, if people are buying PlayStation consoles, but not the games for those consoles, then what are they buying? This is particularly intriguing considering that Sony is earning more from its games than from its consoles.

PC Plus and PC ports of PlayStation games may be the reason for Sony’s high game revenue

Derek Strickland brings in PS Plus here, Sony PlayStation’s subscription system. However, he also added that while Network Services revenue has been lower in FY22 than in FY21, the number of subscribers rose from Q3 to Q4. Regardless, this can be summed as PS5 owners “not buying games,” but at the same time, there’s the higher game software sales throughout FY21 and FY22. Justifying this, Strickland says, that “consumers appear to be buying less games buy are spending more on the games that they do buy…volume is down and game revenues are up.”

Since FY22 software revenues are high and game volume is low, it’s likely that gamers are buying less copies of more expensive games.

The dip in subscriber numbers aligns with a drop in Network Services revenue.

— Derek Strickland (@DeekeTweak) April 29, 2023

Digging deeper into the “games that they do buy,” the document Sony published on the “Supplemental Information” for the Consolidated Financial Results for the Q4 of FY22 has some interesting information. It shows that revenue from peripherals and first party titles on platforms other PlayStation consoles have consistently been on an all-time high since FY21 and FY22. To the extent that the revenue, which was close to $1.5 billion in FY 21, rose to nearly $2.5 billion in FY22.

For the record, FY22 included the launch of PC ports of games like Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Returnal, and The Last of Us Part 1. FY21 saw the launch of God of War on PC. These are some of the biggest titles from PlayStation that made its way to the anticipating PC audience and are clearly bringing in positive business for the company. As a result, Sony said during the latest Consolidated Financial Result, that its aim is to “continue creating new IP, rolling out catalog titles for PC, and strengthening live service development.”