• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Hideki Yasuda (JP Analyst) - The Sony Group may see PS5 as a failure and the envisioned goals are unattainable.

mckmas8808

Mckmaster uses MasterCard to buy Slave drives
He maybe reaching but some of his reasonings are sound.
We have all asked what the fuck are they doing and are told their Profits are the highest they've ever been, Sony is winning.
Which is great, but why does it feel like we're losing.
Going into another generation with a unsatisfactory userbase isn't good regardless of what profit you're making now.
You've just got higher to fall.

How are you determining that the user base is dissatisfied at the moment?

What are you basing this opinion on?
 

coffinbirth

Member
Japan's Michael Pachter:

dhichk6.jpeg



mC74HM0.jpeg





aFD92DH.jpeg






Japan Hardware (Famitsu LTD Week 23, 2024 vs 2017)

PS5 5,683,137 (source)

PS4 4,747,989 (source)



US Hardware (Circana)
IKhwOQO.jpeg


5Upv3aN.jpeg





YTD Hardware

PS5 4.5 m

NSW 1.96 m

XBS 0.8 m


YTD Software

PS 72.6 m

NSW 35.72 m


YTD Sales (Exchange Rate $1= ¥151.34)

Sony G&NS $7,250 m

MS Gaming $5,451 m (includes Activision)

Activision $1,970 m


Nintendo $1,830 m


YTD Operating Income (Exchange Rate $1= ¥151.34)

Sony G&NS $700 m

Nintendo $426 m

Activision (loss) ($350 m)



xvidTeV.jpeg


nuaGoEA.jpeg


BJqygHz.jpeg



PS5 is outselling the PS4 in the US, Japan, China, India ... The PS5 needs a price cut in Europe.


LTD (Launch Aligned)

PS4 60.1 m

PS5 59.3 m

PS2 53.85 m
That may very well be, but it's hard to ignore this for the last bajillion weeks straight.


Dude might be batshit crazy, but this sentiment in Japan is nothing new. Nintendo have dominated the sales charts there for NINETEEN YEARS in a row.
 
https://www.dualshockers.com/the-an...dos-woes-has-an-amazingly-funny-track-record/

The guy is a known quack and if you break down his analysis here, it's entirely half baked.

He's angry that Sony isn't cutting the price of the PS5 in order to sell more units when they don't get profit points for hitting a higher sell through threshold earlier. Sony is entirely content with selling the PS5 in the quantity that they're selling them at the P&L that they're selling them.

He sees having two ceos who have the ability to be granular and nimble in their decision making and management as ambiguous and he doesn't understand it, because he hasn't done a thorough enough analysis as to the kind of business SIE is. He also ignores that they have more granular leadership in the other respective business segments that he mentioned.

He doesn't understand why Sony is in the PlayStation business if their business isn't to sell as many units as they can regardless of the cost. Not understanding that a scheme of selling consoles at great cost limits future growth considerably. The fact is that they have absolutely overwhelmed Xbox to the point where Xbox is putting considerable portfolio on the PS5...

In the business briefing, I couldn't understand whether the goal of the game segment was to make money, to develop the PlayStation business, or to win globally even at the expense of Japanese users. It seems necessary to redefine the purpose of the game business.

He tells on himself at the end there and this is based on his previous analysis. His lack of understand is the key in all of this. The goal of the segment is to make money and develop the PlayStation business. Why should those be at odds. Why would global success need to come at the expense of Japanese users? Especially with PS5 outselling PS4 in Japan despite the price increase.
 
I'll go on to add that if I'm Sony, I'm not taking an extra 100 dollar loss on console units before the release of GTA6 which is going to be exclusive to consoles at first and will drive the sale of millions if not tens of millions of consoles that will be discounted by 100 dollars a pop for no reason.

Between now and the end of FY25, Sony could easily sell between 30-40 million units.

Let's say that Sony is still losing about 50 dollars per console sold. The current loss per device is going to be at most 2 billion dollars.

Discount the PS5 by a hundred dollars and that extends the loss to six billion dollars.

It would be much easier to let the sales demand evaporate AFTER GTA6 and spend that 4 billion dollars (delta) on something tangible. In fact it makes even more sense to release a PS5 Pro which maybe they MAKE 50 dollars a pop on and may represent 25% of sales.

Think about that, you reduce the consoles you were already selling at a loss to 22.5 million to 30 million, which means that your loss is now at most 1.5 billion BUT you're now selling maybe 10 million units at 50 dollars profit, which results in a profit of 500 million, which offsets your initial losses on hardware to just 1 billion.

1 billion dollars compared to 6 billion, only to end up with largely the same user base... That's a 5 billion dollar delta simply by holding off on hardware discounting for another 18 months or so.

With that 5 billion dollars that Sony would have eaten into their own profits, Sony could easily buy a company like FromSoftware/Kadokawa, which will net even more net income for them, not just on PlayStation, but on PC as well. Having FromSoftware be exclusive would also drive higher PS5 and PS6 sales.

Sony is more focused on market share than unit sales. They may discount the PS5 or do bundles, but they don't have to outright cut the price before GTA6 comes out. If they're smart, they're waiting until GTA6 sales really drop off before cutting the price of the PS5. So I wouldn't drop the price of the PS5 until FY26 at the earliest, but for all they know GTA6 pushes PS5 sales so hard that they keep the price the same in FY26 as well.

You look at people buying GTA6 which isn't going to be on the Switch 2 and their only option is buying a PS5 or an Xbox and most will look at the PS5 Pro which is likely to be a higher margin device for Sony.

How this guy doesn't understand that suggests he's a pretty shit analyst.
 
Last edited:

tommib

Gold Member
The constant search for the holy grail of maximum profit is not going to end up well. They should look at Hollywood which kind of killed itself doing this. Turning every creative medium into Goldman Sachs is counterproductive.

Not like I care much at this point. All the good games have been released and mostly are available. Same with cinema. You just need to go back and discover everything you haven’t played or haven’t seen.
 
Last edited:
Well the answer is easy, stretch the console lifespan to 10 years. And this will be easy to do if ms isn't competitive with them. Less overall losses per generation on hardware this way.

The PS6 is likely to launch at a significantly higher price as Sony continues to sell both PS5s and PS6s.

The PS5 was selling from scalpers for like 1000 dollars for the better part of a year.

If Sony can eventually sell a PS5 Digital for 300 dollars without losing money on it, that will be their entry level price and an easy way for people to jump into gaming and play GaaS. A used PS5 digital would probably run 200 or 250 then.

At no point in time are you going to really have success building an equivalent PC for 300 dollars and certainly not 200-250 even used.

For the first time we're really going to see PaaP, PlayStation as a Platform.

Look at Gran Turismo 6, God of War 2, and The Last of Us.

GT6 and GoW2 released on PS3 and PS2 respectively, even though the PS4 and PS3 were either out already or would release shortly after. The same with The Last of Us releasing on PS3 despite the imminent release of the PS3.

We saw the first real signs of PlayStation as a Platform with the PS4 and PS5, but Sony discontinued the PS4 because of the supply chain issues surrounding the pandemic and focused on the PS5 instead.

Software sales of games can be significantly higher at launch if the games are cross gen. Look at Spider-Man Miles Morales as a perfect example of this. It's one reason why PC has always had such a big advantage when consoles were early in a generation. This is where MAUs start to matter more. With PS6 we'll get more games designed around having an SSD.
 

THE DUCK

Banned
The PS6 is likely to launch at a significantly higher price as Sony continues to sell both PS5s and PS6s.

The PS5 was selling from scalpers for like 1000 dollars for the better part of a year.

If Sony can eventually sell a PS5 Digital for 300 dollars without losing money on it, that will be their entry level price and an easy way for people to jump into gaming and play GaaS. A used PS5 digital would probably run 200 or 250 then.

At no point in time are you going to really have success building an equivalent PC for 300 dollars and certainly not 200-250 even used.

For the first time we're really going to see PaaP, PlayStation as a Platform.

Look at Gran Turismo 6, God of War 2, and The Last of Us.

GT6 and GoW2 released on PS3 and PS2 respectively, even though the PS4 and PS3 were either out already or would release shortly after. The same with The Last of Us releasing on PS3 despite the imminent release of the PS3.

We saw the first real signs of PlayStation as a Platform with the PS4 and PS5, but Sony discontinued the PS4 because of the supply chain issues surrounding the pandemic and focused on the PS5 instead.

Software sales of games can be significantly higher at launch if the games are cross gen. Look at Spider-Man Miles Morales as a perfect example of this. It's one reason why PC has always had such a big advantage when consoles were early in a generation. This is where MAUs start to matter more. With PS6 we'll get more games designed around having an SSD.

I think the scalping had a lot to do with covid and pc gpu prices at that time. I agree though building a pc, at least for now would be difficult. Will be interesting though if something like halo.strix came in at a cheap enough price to entice some fairly cheap pc game boxes in console form factor and still have decent enough power for casuals.

I'm wondering why we haven't heard more about ps5 pro, starting to worry it will be scrapped or delayed. I mean I'm.sure Sony would be content to ride out the ps5 if nobody will step up with a more powerfull mid gen machine.

If ms elects on only a handheld, and or something super expensive, but still goes multiplatform, wouldn't that leave a huge opening for nintendo to swoop in and stealth release a 20-25tf machine along side switch 2? Man that would be interesting considering it would have all aaa Nintendo titles plus likely a bunch from MS........
 
Sad part will be that this will be posted in a lot more sites on the internet

And a LOT of people will think this is true.

I don't blame the OP for posting this, but the analysis is super poor and it comes from a company that isn't really well established. You could literally start your own brokerage firm today, and offer your own analysis and it would be taken as seriously as this guy's.

But this is what happens when tabloids and twitter are go to sources for news in today's society. It's particularly difficult when it comes from a different country and you don't know the validity and reputation of sources.
 
I think the scalping had a lot to do with covid and pc gpu prices at that time. I agree though building a pc, at least for now would be difficult. Will be interesting though if something like halo.strix came in at a cheap enough price to entice some fairly cheap pc game boxes in console form factor and still have decent enough power for casuals.

There will never be pc components cheap enough to rival console and wide stream enough that people will want to build it for themselves. I don't think people realize how few people actually want to build their own PC. It's like 0.0001 percent of the market. And even cheap PC boxes aren't going to sell in a mainstream way since you're not going to see them in retail.

I'm wondering why we haven't heard more about ps5 pro, starting to worry it will be scrapped or delayed. I mean I'm.sure Sony would be content to ride out the ps5 if nobody will step up with a more powerfull mid gen machine.

Why would we have heard more about PS5 Pro? Can you work back your logic? You seem to be ignoring precedence and coming to a conclusion based on your own interpretation.

When did Sony announce the PS4 Pro? When did they officially announce the PS5 Slim? When did the PS4 Pro release and when did the PS5 slim release relative to those announcements. It's not difficult to do a proper analysis of whether the PS5 Pro is coming this year.

The PS5 sold 20.8 million units last fiscal year and Sony is anticipating 18 million units this year despite a lack of discounting or major 1st party titles. What would give them confidence that the PS5 could sell only 3 million fewer units this year than last year?

If ms elects on only a handheld, and or something super expensive, but still goes multiplatform, wouldn't that leave a huge opening for nintendo to swoop in and stealth release a 20-25tf machine along side switch 2? Man that would be interesting considering it would have all aaa Nintendo titles plus likely a bunch from MS........

Nintendo could release a more powerful machine, but then they'll be in the position of needing to develop titles for both that and the Switch 2. This device would be more expensive than PS5 yet have fewer titles and less powerful than the PS5 Pro.
 
What nonsense how can the best generation especially Income wise for Sony be a failure? Such nonsense!

The guy doesn't like that the PS5 is so expensive which seriously impacts Japanese hardware and especially Japanese software sales, particularly physical sales as reported by Famitsu.

I believe that Sony will eventually release a PS5 capable handled (albeit scaled down) and we'll see what price they can release it at and what impact it has on the Japanese market.

I think Project Q-Lite was an opening salvo into that until the tech and PSSR are ready to deliver on the handheld they want to make.
 
Sony: *is making more money than its ever made before with PlayStation*
Sony: *has outlasted every competitor, forcing all of them to abandon direct competition*
Sony: *continues to make critical and commercial smash hits*
Analyst: PS5 is a clear failure, and Sony needs to move on to the PS6.

Doing great business and making record breaking profits aren't enough. This is why the world's economy is being run into the fucking ground.
Your competitors leaving business is not a good sign.

Fundamentally business has some issues that not many want to invest in it.
 
Your competitors leaving business is not a good sign.

Fundamentally business has some issues that not many want to invest in it.

That doesn't add up. It would be if there was general weakness in the market, but that isn't why Microsoft is leaving the market. They're simply losing market share.

Sony has successfully defeated their competitors and has largely been market leader from their entry into the market.

They're now ideally placed to expand into other markets, which will greatly improve their margins.
 
That doesn't add up. It would be if there was general weakness in the market, but that isn't why Microsoft is leaving the market. They're simply losing market share.

Sony has successfully defeated their competitors and has largely been market leader from their entry into the market.

They're now ideally placed to expand into other markets, which will greatly improve their margins.
Sony has defeated everyone and soon will defeat itself out of the market is what it seems like, from this article.

Console business, we dont have full picture. What do they have to spend to make a viable platform?

There are a lot of questions.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Your competitors leaving business is not a good sign.

Fundamentally business has some issues that not many want to invest in it.

Xbox suffered low software sales and hardware sales for 2 generations, something Sony doesnt have a problem with.
MS Spent alot of money 70+billion and didnt get the outcome it wanted from games like Starfield On gamepass.

Sony and Nintendo have been selling there software at record breaking amounts. PS4 Sold over 120m+ last generation and PS5 is expected to do the same roughly.

MS was forced to leave the business because Gamepass wasnt working and they made a bunch of big mistakes. There games simply dont sell.

MS’s issues arent the same as Sony’s. Xbox struggles to sell past 55munits outside of the 360 generation, Sony has never had that issue.
Playstations exclusives like God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Spiderman, Horizon, GT, Uncharted all sell 8+million units and more. They are not in the same position in the industry.

As much as everyone wants to say exclusives are bad, consoles are dead since Xbox decided to go 3rd party, this is just Xbox Narrative… Because no1 was saying this till it happened and Phil said it. J
ust because a bunch of pro Xbox journalists and fanboys say it, doesnt make it true. Forbes, Eurogamer, Ign, Bloomsberg, they just sound like Xbox’s bootlickers when they keep repeating and copying what each other say.
Playstation sells 100+million consoles. PS studio big budget games that sell 5-10+ million. They are not in the same position as Xbox
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Sony has defeated everyone and soon will defeat itself out of the market is what it seems like, from this article.

Console business, we dont have full picture. What do they have to spend to make a viable platform?

There are a lot of questions.
Lol, there is no need for questions.
Make console, make games. People need to stop trying to create questions, narratives and problems when there isnt any. Xbox couldnt cut it, simple. Thats it. Nintendo and Playstation are fine

@valibhavpisal you can keep laughing, but you need to stop being concerned lol. Consoles dont need you to worry about them lol. Your concern is appreciated but unneeded
 
Last edited:

Astray

Member
He maybe reaching but some of his reasonings are sound.
We have all asked what the fuck are they doing and are told their Profits are the highest they've ever been, Sony is winning.
Which is great, but why does it feel like we're losing.
Going into another generation with a unsatisfactory userbase isn't good regardless of what profit you're making now.
You've just got higher to fall.
Because corporations winning isn't the same as consumers winning.

Also our definition of winning is kinda skewed. The current gen (especially kids) only cares about service games and maybe Nintendo games, they will age out of one and not the other..
 
Lol, there is no need for questions.
Make console, make games. People need to stop trying to create questions, narratives and problems when there isnt any. Xbox couldnt cut it, simple. Thats it. Nintendo and Playstation are fine
Sure keep ignoring what everyone and Sony themselves are saying.

They set a very unrealistic target for console sales last year. And were disappointed they couldn’t achieve that.

Its a publicly traded company and wouldn’t do that stuff for fun.
 

Kokoloko85

Member
Sure keep ignoring what everyone and Sony themselves are saying.

They set a very unrealistic target for console sales last year. And were disappointed they couldn’t achieve that.

Its a publicly traded company and wouldn’t do that stuff for fun.
Who is everyone? Forbes? Eurogamer? fan on Neogaf? Analysis who always hate on Playstation? Ign lol.
The same bunch of people who were telling everyone consoles and Playstation is done for during the PS3 generation. The same people who kept saying Gamepass was the future…?
When the same bunch of people all suddenly agree and make articles that agree with Phil Spencer, thats less reliable than Pachter.

Phil Spencer cant sell games or consoles near Playstation or Nintendo’s level, thats why his console and vision has failed. His word doesnt mean anything when it comes to consoles or what the future is. He knows nothing.

When did Sony say exclusives are not good and console business is dying?
All I see is bootlickers suddenly repeating the same things after Phil said they are going to sell games on other platforms.
 
Last edited:
Sony has defeated everyone and soon will defeat itself out of the market is what it seems like, from this article.

Console business, we dont have full picture. What do they have to spend to make a viable platform?

There are a lot of questions.

It's pretty generous to call this an article.

It's just one dude's opinion (biased) based on listening to Sony's business segment meeting that many of us also listened to and no one came to the same conclusions, save for some extreme fanboys/trolls.

I can imagine him writing an article about Apple ruining their iPod business by releasing the iPhone (note the last iPod was released in 2019). Businesses evolve and it may not always be to everyone's preference.

Sony is recreating what PlayStation means, that's why it's created two business segments within SIE.

Platform Business Group and Studio Business Group.

Nishino is going to build a platform around PlayStation

  • Console
  • PC
  • Handhled
  • Mobile
While Hulst is going to build a brand around PlayStation Studios/SIE
  • Games
  • Movies
  • TV Shows
Both business segments will further the other.

When the Blade movie came out in 1998, the idea of comic book movies were a complete joke, even after the success of the 70s Superman movies and the 80s Batman movies. Only 10 years later in 2008, The Dark Knight became the first billion dollar comic book movie. Now DC and Marvel are better known for their movies than they are comics or anything else. That's just business evolution.

That doesn't mean that Sony is going to give up or even deprioritize the PlayStation console. When Sony creates a launcher on PC, guess what one of their primary goals will be. To get users to pay for PS+ on PC even without having to tie online play to the service. Why would they do that? What if I told you that not everyone who even has PS+ on console plays online games? Free monthly games, cross save and cross progression with console, handheld, and mobile... maybe other fringe benefits like Crunchyroll access.

The money they can make from Steam and Switch will help them in their greater pursuits, just as Netflix using 3rd party content allowed them to build a massive streaming brand and eventually create their own content. Netflix is a much larger company than the brands it was buying from in the past.

Sony creating PS Link albeit poorly out of the gate, suggests they have larger plans for hardware and audio a kin to what Apple has done with airpods.
 
He maybe reaching but some of his reasonings are sound.
We have all asked what the fuck are they doing and are told their Profits are the highest they've ever been, Sony is winning.
Which is great, but why does it feel like we're losing.
Going into another generation with a unsatisfactory userbase isn't good regardless of what profit you're making now.
You've just got higher to fall.
I honestly can't understand posts like this. This year we got TLOU2 Remaster, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin, FFVII Rebirth, console exclusive Helldivers 2 (an IP from, Sony). Still coming you have Lego Horizon Adventures, Astrobot, Silent Hill 2 (console exclusive), Until Dawn Remake and Concord.

You are getting at least 3 new IPs, 2 remakes, 1 remaster, 2 sequels. You are getting plenty of previously Xbox-console exclusives on PS5 with more to come. All multiplatform games are coming to PS5 as well.

If you're losing that's on you. I'm having quite a great year so far. There's so much to play, so many different types of games...but sure. Sony didn't give us an overbloated conference with games we have no idea when are releasing so no games are releasing as well lmao.
 
Last edited:

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
That is why I can't help but feel ambiguity in the management's decision to allow Jim Ryan (former CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment), who was responsible for the confusion in the game business, to leave amicably. I fear that such vague management strategies may impact the company's business in the future.
Pretty interesting comment that he seems pissed that Jim Ryan was allowed to resign. Sounds like he wanted him fired with clear explanation of what he was doing wrong, and how new management is different. Can't say I disagree with him on the vague management strategies thing as well after that Herman talk.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Sure keep ignoring what everyone and Sony themselves are saying.

They set a very unrealistic target for console sales last year. And were disappointed they couldn’t achieve that.

Its a publicly traded company and wouldn’t do that stuff for fun.
I think coming from what Xbox had to offer Sony really expected to just completely annihilate Xbox brand in all regions, even by a much wider margin than they are already doing.

Its still only twice as much I think. And MS is no joke in making money, they pivoted to a different strategy by the signs of times and partially what best a losing side can make of the situation. Eye baling Sony PS5 marketshare, they should have been in a much much better position to push other services/etc through PS5.

I imagine if Xbox had that kind of lead, you would see insane tactics from MS to make more money out of their dominant situation.
 
Sure keep ignoring what everyone and Sony themselves are saying.

They set a very unrealistic target for console sales last year. And were disappointed they couldn’t achieve that.

Its a publicly traded company and wouldn’t do that stuff for fun.

They misread the tailwinds of covid. They were selling a tremendous number of PS5s. Somehow people are fixated on holding that miss against that as a general indictment of their business.

They still had one of their best selling years in PlayStation history... like a top 3 or 4 year all time...

If anyone does forecasting or budgeting for their work, they understand how difficult it is to forecast or budget under normal circumstances let alone unusual circumstances such as covid, but these people going on about the 25 million forecast probably have never worked a corporate job in their lives.

I budget all the time for work and I'm pretty good at it, but a budget unlike a forecast is based on what I'm spending as opposed to selling. I have far more control and far fewer variables and I can create buffer for variables that I can somewhat foresee based off of past budget variances. Like what line items made me go overbudget in the previous year and why weren't they budgeted for.

Forecasting works in a similar way.

  • How many consoles did we sell the previous year
  • How many consoles did we sell in the previous generation launch aligned
  • What games are coming out this year and do we expect they'll sell more consoles than last year's crop of games
  • What games came out in the previous generation launch aligned
  • Do we have budget for promotions to push more units
  • Does the competition have any games that we think are going to shift more units
  • Does the competition have any new hardware coming out
  • How long do people normally take to upgrade their consoles
  • Are people actively using their old consoles
  • Are new games going to release for old consoles and will they allow you to play with people on new consoles
  • What does consumer spending generally look like for the year

When Sony made the 25 million unit forecast, they couldn't even keep units in stock, they were selling out instantly. There was no precedence for the situation they were in and they thought that train was going to run a bit harder than they expected. The transition to PS5 Slims hurt their sales for a few weeks as well, which certainly didn't help them nor did the price increase of the ps5 slim digital.

Not only could sony not tell how much demand there was for the PS5 since it was selling out immediately, they also couldn't tell how the global economy would shape up or how the war in ukraine would impact sales. Not selling in Russia may have been something they didn't factor in and that could have been a million or two units right there. Given the economic decline in Europe, I don't think their forecast was that poor.

Sony should have revised those estimates much sooner, but I think they thought Spider-Man 2 was going to carry them as it was reviewing well externally and probably internally. Starfield failed to push the Xbox Series, so that probably made Sony more confident that they would be able to sell more units in the holiday season than they ended up selling.
 
Pretty interesting comment that he seems pissed that Jim Ryan was allowed to resign. Sounds like he wanted him fired with clear explanation of what he was doing wrong, and how new management is different. Can't say I disagree with him on the vague management strategies thing as well after that Herman talk.

What was vague. Can you be more specific yourself?
 
PlayStation this generation doesn’t seem to have anything special about it, along with XBOX. There’s no point investing into these platforms when the majority of their exclusive titles are heading over to PC. I’m not a PC gamer, but the PC gaming market has grown exponentially over the last decade.

XBOX exclusives release day/date on PC, and PlayStation is heading in this direction eventually, albeit with a slow drip / delay for a few months after console release. All the big PlayStation titles end up on PC within a short timeframe.

The only console/platform worth investing into is Nintendo, and it’s the only console that still feels like an actual console. You can’t play Nintendo titles anywhere else, and I don’t see Nintendo changing their strategy anytime soon.
 
Ask yourself....... Why do the games that I dislike sell so much worldwide?

I hope you can get to the answer in short order and fully understand that answer.
Ask yourself....... Why do people collect funco pops?

I hope you can get to the answer in short order and fully understand that answer.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
What was vague. Can you be more specific yourself?
I think all of it is vague. What this article represents is someone who is actually investing in Sony trying to judge what is coming in the future. That person has very little information at this point.

The whole console market is shifting. PS management just lost a CEO mid-generation and now has 2 for the first time, they fired head of production Connie Booth, they aren't announcing games, they're putting stuff on PC and Switch, they're losing some of their 2nd party exclusive partners like SQEX, and this guy also noted Rise of the Ronin underperforming. Console growth is slowing down and PS didn't seem to detail any kind of real response to that other than Horizon Lego on Switch or PC releases. If console sales continue to slow down, PS will be more out of position than their competitors, and there's really no current public plans to acknowledge that or prepare for it. Instead they even said "even if PS5 sales are lower it's not a problem because we're making a profit." That's fine now, but pretty much kryptonite to an investor listening to management trying to plan for the future. I'm sure it's not lost on him also that PS is falling further and further behind in Japan compared to Nintendo.

I don't view things from an investment perspective at all, but a consumer one. For me personally, I think it's the worst PS generation of all time and they've lost me as a customer permanently on their hardware, and their subscription. I may still get some of the software, but likely just on PC. I don't pretend to have any kind of market analysis or professional opinion, but if anyone else feels the way I do on any of this stuff, you could see some of that sentiment manifest on PS6 when people are faced with another big purchase but are not satisfied customers. It sounds silly to ever doubt sales of something that's killing it currently, but looking ahead at the future, I don't see any real drivers of growth coming, but lots of indications that things could decrease a tiny bit. I don't see excitement building for the Spider Man games, but we know there's more coming for years. I don't see excitement building for God of War after Ragnarok, but there's likely another one. I don't see excitement for Concord or Fairgames, but it's still early so who knows. I could see all these doing well, but maybe not as well as the games that preceded them. I don't see excitement building for PS+ as a subscription. If I was actually investing my own money into Sony stock, these are all critical questions I'd be asking. But luckily I don't have to worry about any of that and just look at it from the consumer point of view. But I did find a couple of his statements interesting in this article. Made me think about it from an investment perspective, which I don't really do.
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom