But, according to Bloomberg, that’s exactly what Senior Vice President Naomi Matsuoka said during the organisation’s recent earnings call. While the new-gen system sold well over the holidays, it failed to meet the manufacturer’s lofty expectations, forcing it to revise its forecast down from 25 million units to 21 million units. It should be noted these are still massively impressive numbers, but obviously missed targets will always be painted as a negative.
“Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter half of its life cycle,” Matsuoka said. “As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.” In other words, this current period is presumably the platform’s peak, and the firm is predicting a gradual decline from here.
Of course, nothing the manufacturer’s saying here is all that controversial really. It stands to reason there’ll be a gradual slowing of PS5’s sales unless there’s a price cut, and given Sony’s razor-thin margins, it looks like it’s going to focus more on profitability moving forwards. That’ll naturally impede the number of units it ships, which are unlikely to hit these kinds of highs again unless something unexpected happens.
So, the platform holder is communicating sensibly and honestly with its investors, which is what a responsible corporation should do. We know it’s continuing to invest in software for the system, and while longer development times means the cadence of first-party releases hasn’t exactly managed to meet expectations thus far, it’s not like there are a shortage of games to play, is it? The PS5 may be into the second half of its lifespan right now, but that means there’s still a good three or four years of great content still to come.
[source bloomberg.com]
