PS Plus

Sony has lost 1.9 million PS Plus subscribers in the past three months, its Q2 fiscal year 2022 financial results reveal. It means the service's member count drops to 45.4 million, down from 47.3 million in the previous quarter. This is the first full quarter since PS Plus underwent a revamp and introduced two new tiers in PS Plus Extra and PS Plus Premium.

This is the third quarter in a row Sony has recorded a loss of PS Plus subscribers, with the service's peak being a count of exactly 48 million in Q3 of fiscal year 2021. As for why it lost more members this past quarter, Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki pointed to the decline of sales for third-party titles as well as the PS4 system itself, and that "more people [are] going outdoors".

The firm expects more PS Plus members to come on board in the next quarter, though, citing the impact of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and God of War Ragnarok. Interestingly, despite the loss of subscribers, Sony's network services actually recorded a 10 per cent increase in revenue. It could suggest that while there are fewer members, enough subscribers have upgraded to a higher tier to offset the loss from those who left.

Engagement on PS4 in particular is given as the reason for the drop in members, while PS5 users are subscribing to the service at a much higher rate. "We are putting even more effort into accelerating the penetration of PS5 hardware to recover this user engagement going forward." Across the second quarter of fiscal year 2022, Sony also recorded a loss of one million monthly active users.

[source sony.com, via videogameschronicle.com]