Sony recently announced that the PS5 has sold 54.8 million units worldwide, and while that’s quite an impressive number for a console that’s only just entered the fourth year of its lifecycle, it has missed the company’s internal sales target by quite a bit. Sony has, as such, revised its forecast for total PS5 units shipped during FY 2023/24 (which ends on March 31) from 25 million down to 21 million, and the company is now feeling the immediate repercussions of that.
As reported by CNBC, based on calculation using FactSet data, Sony saw a drastic decline of around $10 billion in its stock value after it announced that it had lowered its PS5 sales target for the fiscal year. At the time, the company also announced that with the console approaching the latter half of its lifecycle, its sales were expected to see a gradual decline going forward.
While the missed sales target is certainly a concern, it seems there are even bigger potential problems at play. As per Atul Goyal, equity analyst at Jefferies, the larger issue lies with Sony reporting its low operating margin. The company’s gaming division recently reported an operating margin of 6% for the quarter ending December 31, which is not only down from the 9% that was reported a year prior, but also the lowest it’s been in nearly a decade.
According to Goyal, prior to 2022, margins had been hovering in the 12-13 percent range for a period of four years. The analysts, who calls the current operating margins “extremely disappointing”, says this is “despite various tailwinds that should have driven up the margins towards 20%.”
Serkan Toto, CEO and founder of consultancy firm Kantan Games, states that Sony’s operating margins have likely been impacted by the long-term effects of the large budgets the company assigns to its first-party titles- such as Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which reportedly had a development and marketing budget of $315 million, as per leaked internal documents emerging from the data breach suffered by developer Insomniac Games in December.
Recently, Sony also said that it won’t be releasing any new instalments in major existing first-party franchises until at least April 2025. However, the company does have several PlayStation Studios releases lined up for 2024 nonetheless, with the recently-released Helldivers 2 set to be joined by the likes of Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Concord, and Until Dawn over the coming months. Leaks have claimed that a new Astro Bot title could also release this year.
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