news business The PS5 is blasting everything in its path, but the Xbox is down: this week’s business news
This week, the end of the financial year marks a new showdown between the different manufacturers with new impressive numbers, especially on the PS5 side. Let’s look at that together.
New PlayStation 5 results destroy everything
Sony regularly updates the numbers of the PS5 and the latest, which appeared two days ago, makes everyone agree: the Japanese console is a monster of the trade war. Since the shortage finally ended in early 2023, The floodgates are open and the machine is pouring out like hotcakes… but at the time we had no idea.
Let’s talk concretely: until today, 38.4 million PS5s were sold worldwide. For the same marketing period (i.e. ten quarters) It’s already better than the Nintendo Switch and is clearly catching up with the PlayStation 4.
Otherwise more impressive: the results of the last quarter. From January to March 2023, Sony sold 6.3 million PS5s and brace yourself, that’s the all-time highest score for this time of year in video game history. It’s also 215% more than PS5 sales in the same quarter of 2022.
To measure it, Sony’s video game business has brought in almost as much as the entire PS4 generation (7 years counted) and more than triple the PS2 generation (6 years counted) over the last three years. pic.twitter.com/yHVBonv37t
— Oscar Lemaire (@oscarlemaire) April 28, 2023
If we take the full fiscal year, which ran from April 2022 to March 2023, the results are also excellent, with 19.1 million PS5s sold (+66%). Of the 264.2 million PS4 and PS5 games sold, 43.5 million are Sony-produced titles (which, however, corresponds to a slight decrease of 1%).
It’s special in addition to the annual turnover that Sony achieves with 24.5 billion dollars (+33%), a new record for the Japanese company. Even so, operating profit fell 28%.
Finally, if we had to summarize, Sony’s gaming division has raked in as much in the last three years as it did in the seven years of the PS4. It’s simply gigantic, no question about it.
Xbox: Console Sales Down, But Game Pass Is Slowly Growing
For its part, Microsoft also reported on its most recent fiscal quarter, which ran from January to March 2023. And on the Xbox series side, results aren’t the best as console sales are still down 30%. Sales figures are not given, but chief financial officer Amy Hood confirmed that the decline was also due to last year’s very convincing results.
Remember that a few days ago we learned that in Europe Xbox Series sales also fell 10% in the fiscal first quarter.
Still concerning this beginning of the year, Gaming revenue is also down 4%.
On the other hand, revenue from Xbox content and services is up slightly by 3%. It’s because of “Better-than-expected monetization of third-party and proprietary content and Xbox Game Pass growth”which keeps growing.
If you’ve ever wondered Microsoft’s revenue remains stratospheric with no less than $52.9 billion (+7%) and net income of $18.3 billion (+9%). Microsoft Cloud has also reached $28.5 billion, with revenue increasing 22% year-over-year. In short, yes, it’s still one of the most powerful companies on this planet.
Cloud gaming politics are evolving… posing a problem for the Activision-Blizzard acquisition
We know it: Microsoft bets heavily on its Game Pass and through the Ultimate offer it’s possible to play an entire catalog in cloud gaming, which only requires a good internet connection and no Xbox console at hand. This is the future for the American company and this is what poses a problem for the CMAthe British competition authority, which has just passed its verdict on the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard: No.
This should complicate the titanic acquisition of Microsoft, or at least postpone it for a while. The CMA believes that the company’s proposed cloud gaming is too threatening to the competition and would urge its rivals to turn to them for profit. In short, it is not attached to the organization and, moreover, Microsoft has reacted quite violently.
Whatever, on his side, Microsoft doesn’t intend to stop there and has just signed a ten-year deal with Nware, a Europe-based cloud gaming platform. Microsoft Vice President Brad Smith revealed the nature of the deal, promising to bring Xbox games from PC Game Pass to Nware, including Activision Blizzard titles, once the acquisition is confirmed.
This operation comes to light shortly after the UK CMA’s decision, and not for nothing: Microsoft is thus proving its credentials and wants to prove that its “competitors” in the cloud gaming environment have nothing to fear if they buy the American publisher. A long soap opera that we’ll probably be hearing about for quite a while.
Briefly in the business news of the week
- Sony expects to sell 25 million PlayStation 5s in the current fiscal year. If the manufacturer succeeds, it would be a record for him.
- high in lifethe FPS from the creator of Rick & Morty and exclusive to Xbox, has over 7.5 million unique players across PC and Xbox. It’s one of Xbox Game Pass’s biggest hits.
- Wo Long: The Fallen DynastyTeam Ninja’s Souls-like, released last February, just surpassed one million sales.
- Koei Tecmo announced good results for the 2022-2023 financial year with a sales increase of 7.8% or more than 9 million video games sold for 589 million sales.
- Activision-Blizzard also released its results for fiscal year 2022-2023: The company earned $2.38 billion (+35%) with net income of $740 million (+87%).
- Chinese giant NetEase has announced the launch of a new development studio called Anchor Point Studios. It is directed by Paul Ehrlich (Ex-Director of Smilegate Barcelona and Ex-Lead Designer at Remedy who worked on Alan Wake 2 and Control). The company is based in Barcelona, Europe, with an office in Seattle, USA. It will specialize in action-adventure games.
Our other business articles of the week
Table of Contents
