During the publication of the report for the 3rd quarter of 2023, Sony informed investors about a new record of PS5 sales. Only in December, it announced that it had sold 50 million devices. Since its launch in November 2020, sales of the latest PlayStation console have reached 54.8 million units, with 8.2 million units sold in the last quarter.
This is a significant increase from 7.1 million units in the third quarter of 2022; however, Sony had an incredibly ambitious target of 25 million PS5 units sold during the 2023 fiscal year and has now been forced to revise that forecast downward to 21 million units. The new forecast also envisages a 5% downward revision in annual revenue.
Additionally, Sony has revealed that no major PS5 game franchises will be released in the next fiscal year (April 2024 to March 2025). Most likely, the company only has top-notch releases in mind. This is not surprising, as most of their in-house studios are likely too early in development to release anything within a year or so.
Naughty Dog recently cancelled The Last of Us Online, which was supposed to be their next release. Although Neil Druckmann has confirmed that the new project is in the works, it will likely take a few more years to come to fruition. Guerrilla Games released Horizon Forbidden West in 2022 and the Burning Shores expansion last year. The company has announced Horizon Online, but it’s too early.
Housemarque launched Returnal in 2021 and Sony Santa Monica released God of War Ragnarok last year. Insomniac Games just released Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (which, by the way, just passed the 10 million mark in sales, and the franchise is at 50 million in sales). Bend Studio is working on a new IP, while Polyphony is still very busy updating GT7. As for the big sequels for PS5, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima 2 could be it (the first part was released in July 2020), but it is not ready yet.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Sony won’t release any PS5 games from top-notch developers in fiscal 2024. The company commented on the large existing franchises. New games may still be released during this period. Haven’s Fairgame$ and Firewalk’s Concord are two such candidates.
At most, Sony said it expects PS5 hardware sales to gradually decline in the next fiscal year as the hardware enters the “second half” of its life cycle. By the way, there probably won’t be any drastic price cuts, as Sony has much less room to cut production costs compared to the PlayStation 4.
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