Sony has outlined the future of the PlayStation 5 as part of its latest financial reports.
It’s not all good news, even if Sony’s console is soundly beating its Xbox Series rivals on sales.
First up, Sony says we shouldn’t expect big first-party exclusives before April 2025.
“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games, but, while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year, like God of War Ragnarök and Marvelʼs Spider-Man,” says Sony president Hiroki Totoki.
The console instead will lean on a “gradual expansion” in third-party software sales, according to Sony’s financial report summary. Big upcoming games this year include Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, due out tomorrow (February 16), Dragon’s Dogma 2 (March 21), and Star Wars Outlaws (TBC).
Sony also expects to see a “gradual decline” in PlayStation 5 sales, and Totoki describes the console as “entering the latter half of the console cycle”.
The PlayStation 5 is a few months past its third birthday, having been released in November 2020.
Despite recent headlines declaring the console a sales smash, the PlayStation 5 failed to hit its sales targets in the last quarter. This has caused Sony to drop its yearly sales estimate from 25 million to 21 million – accounting for a 12-month period ending on March 31, 2024. It’s a big drop.
This missed target may have been exacerbated by the flurry of compelling PlayStation 5 price cuts earlier in 2023. People who might otherwise have bought a console in recent months picked one up a little earlier.
In August 2023, gamesindustry.biz reported PlayStation console sales increased by 75 per cent when the price of the original disc-based model was dropped to £399.
Still, Sony says the last quarter represented a “record high number of quarterly unit sales for PS5”. The console has sold upwards of 50 million units to date, a milestone confirmed in December 2023.
Even bigger PlayStation 5 news may come later today, from no less than Microsoft. At 8pm on February 15, an episode of the Official Xbox Podcast will outline the future for Xbox, and it is expected to include ports of current Xbox exclusive games for PlayStation 5.
Likely Xbox Game Studios ports include Pentiment and Hi-Fi Rush, while some suggest Microsoft will go as far as releasing Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones and the Great Circle for PlayStation 5. This is becoming a trend, as Sony also plans to improve its profit margins by making PC versions of its games available more quickly, according to VGC.
