Financial results are coming in, and Sony is charting huge success for PlayStation. To date, there have been over 67.5 million PS4s shipped, and Sony is predicting that by this coming March, there will be almost 80 million PS4s out in the wild. This is all PS4s, by the way: original, slim, and pro.
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Needless to say, the PS4 is going to catch up to the PS3 lifetime sales milestone, and then crush it in record time. Of course, this huge jump in console sales also means a huge bump in software sales, PlayStation Plus member revenue, and increases in accessory attachment. In fact, Sony saw an unprecedented 739 percent jump in year-over-year net income, according to TweakTown.
“Sony’s latest financial report fro fiscal Q2’17 see the Japanese company enjoying a staggering 739% spike in YoY net income, or bottom-line income after taxes and expenditures, to $1.263 billion (142.8 billion yen),” the article points out. “The company managed to deliver a meteoric 2600% jump in net income attributable to stockholders in the period to $1.158 billion (130.9 billion yen), which ensures holders of Sony stock look favorably on the company.”
So what does this mean for you as Sony shifts its approach in 2018?
The Shift to Services and Smaller Transactions
It’s worth noting that as the rate of hardware sales begins to decline, Sony will be focusing more acutely on PlayStation Plus retention, and smaller digital transactions in the future. Several outlets are spinning this as Sony making a shift to microtransactions for sustained revenue, and while that’s true in a sense, it should also mean that we see some interesting new features make their way to PlayStation Plus in the near future.
Just think about it. Next March there will be around 80 million PlayStation 4 owners. If Sony can somehow entice all of those 80 million users to opt in on a $60 PlayStation Plus subscription, that’s an insane amount of revenue, and Sony is pretty much guaranteed huge software revenue as PlayStation Plus members enjoy exclusive sale prices and offers not available to non-plus members.
Sony’s game plan going forward will be to entice gamers to keep their Plus Subscriptions active, and the best way to do that is with incredible free games and exciting new features. That’s a win for us, in the end.
