In a report on its Game & Network Services segment released overnight, Sony has revealed a broad-strokes look how it performed in its financial year 2022 and its plans for the coming future.
There’s a heap to pore over around how the brand has performed, particularly coming off the back of a return to supply of PS5 consoles following pandemic and manufacturing-related challenges, and where it’s seeing engagement from players – it’s certainly interesting to see that among the 30% of players on the new subscription tiers, a majority are in the more expensive Deluxe/Premium ring. Sony’s shown it’s projecting the PS5 to be ahead of PS4 on all of its key metrics (console user spend, game sales, hours played, active users and consoles) by the end of the 2023 FY.
One detail that stands out is Sony’s goal for evolving the outlook of its first-party game portfolio, now that its all-encompassing content plans and studio acquisitions are all beginning to fall into place. The company shared a slide that reveals it plans to release “two or more major releases” per year going forward, and wants these to cover every “major genre.” It’s also planning to have a mix of single-player and live service titles in that crowd, with a balance of “big franchises” and new IP.
Sony also reiterates its strategy of synergy between different platforms and forms of media, something we can already see in action with the recent and rapid push into bringing PlayStation IP to the big and small screens, resulting in greater sales of games like The Last of Us and even promoting Sony-owned music through appearances in its games and video content.
PlayStation VR2 is also a big component of this cross-media push, with the report also revealing that the PS VR2 sold around 600,000 units in its first six week on sale, outpacing its predecessor in an identical time period by 8%, so there’s good opportunity there for PlayStation to leverage its bigger IP on that platform as well.
Speaking to areas of potential future growth, Sony’s also very clearly interested in live service games, and crossing over into the PC and mobile markets. It’s pumped a lot of money into exploring these areas with studio acquisitions and new ventures, so it’ll be interesting to see how it leverages some of its massive IP to work towards those goals.
Of course, there’s a good shot we’re going to see some of these plans in greater detail tomorrow morning when the massive, hour-plus-long PlayStation Showcase debuts to give us all a taste of what’s coming.
