After missing its sales target in the last quarter, Sony says it plans to emphasize the PlayStation 5’s profitability over unit sales as the console approaches its fourth birthday. “Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” said Sony senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka. “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.” Sony also said it has no plans to release “any new major existing franchise titles” in its next fiscal year. The Verge reports: Sony now expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 consoles in its 2023 fiscal year ending March 31st compared to previous projections, Bloomberg reports. The revision came as part of today’s third-quarter earnings release which saw Sony lower the PS5 sales forecast from the 25 million consoles it expected to sell down to 21 million.

While PS5 sales were up in Sony’s third quarter, increasing to 8.2 million units from 6.3 million in the same quarter the previous year, Bloomberg notes that this was roughly a million units lower than it had previously projected. That’s despite the release of the big first-party title Spider-Man 2, strong sales of third-party titles, and the launch of a new slimmer PS5 in November.

In its third quarter, Sony’s gaming revenue was up 16 percent versus the same period the previous year, sitting at 1.4 trillion yen (around $9.3 billion), but operating income was down 26 percent to 86.1 billion yen (around $572 million) due to promotions in the third quarter ending on December 31st.

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PlayStation 5 system update blocks Cronus Zen controller adapter. The $100+ device promises controller compatibility but also enables gameplay “amplification.” Sony crackdown follows concerns over GamePacks providing unfair advantages in Call of Duty and other online multiplayer titles. Cronus admits no timeframe for a fix. Workaround requires avoiding update or using Remote Play.

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Sony says it sold a total of 38.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles, according to the company’s latest earnings release. In the first three months of the year, it shipped 6.3 million units — “more than triple what the company shipped in the same quarter the previous year (2 million),” reports The Verge. From the report: On the software side things were more mixed, Bloomberg notes. Revenue from game software was up overall, but units shipped fell from 70.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 68 million in the same quarter of 2022. PlayStation Network monthly active users were up slightly from 106 million to 108 million, but the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers were flat at 47.4 million.

This disparity partly reflects the lack of major first-party games releases in the quarter. But there are also concerns that the PS5’s earlier hardware supply issues are having a knock on effect on software sales and subscriptions, which are important if the company wants to build a “virtuous cycle” of mutually reinforcing console and game sales. CNBC notes that the company reported an operating profit of a record 1.21 trillion yen (around $8.9 billion) for the year, with revenue in the quarter rising 35 percent to 3.06 trillion yen (around $22.5 billion).

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Sony is drastically scaling back its sales expectations for next month’s launch of the PlayStation VR2 headset, according to a Bloomberg report citing “people familiar with [Sony’s] deliberations.” Ars Technica reports: The PlayStation 5 maker now expects to sell just 1 million PSVR2 units by the end of March, down from sales expectations of 2 million units in that period, as reported last October. Sony expects to sell about 1.5 million more headsets in the following fiscal year, which ends in March 2024, according to the report. The scaled-back sales expectations would put the PSVR2 slightly ahead of the pace set by the original PSVR headset, which sold just under a million units in its first four months and 2 million units in just over a year. But that kind of sales pace looks less impressive today, when a headset like the Meta Quest 2 can sell a reported 2.8 million units in its first quarter, on its way to total sales of over 15 million, according to market analysis firm IDC.

The Quest 2 has a few key advantages in the competition with Sony’s upcoming headset, including an asking price that’s $150 less, even after a recent price hike. The self-contained Quest 2 also doesn’t need to be tethered to any external hardware, contrasting with the PSVR2’s reliance on a hookup to a $499 PlayStation 5. Despite the Quest 2’s success at its relatively low price, though, the VR industry at large seems to be moving toward the higher end of the pricing spectrum these days. Meta’s Quest Pro launched last October at a bafflingly high $1,499, though a one-week sale has slashed that price by $400 for the moment. And next month’s standalone Vive XR Elite will cost $1,099.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The PlayStation 5 shortage is finally over — at least according to Sony. “Everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier time finding one at retailers globally, starting from this point forward,” said Jim Ryan, the company’s gaming boss, during its CES presentation. The company also announced that it’s sold around 30 million consoles at this point. That’s around 5 million more than the last time it released sales numbers in November.

It’s been a long time getting to this point; the PlayStation 5 launched in November 2020, and it wasn’t until August 2022 that we declared it “almost easy to buy.” For most of the console’s life, getting one required you to be either very lucky, relatively on-the-spot with drops, or willing to pay scalpers or Best Buy significantly more than the console’s MSRP. Even recently, the main way to get it was via a $550 bundle, which included the PS5 with disk drive, and a game — that’s fine if you were already going to buy Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarok, but a pretty steep markup if you were hoping for the $399.99 digital console. During the presentation, Ryan thanked PlayStation fans for their patience as the company “managed unprecedented demand amid global challenges over the past two years.”

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The PS5 looks to have a design fault that can take months to appear and only seems to happen if you use the console while it’s in a vertical orientation. From a report: As Wololo reports, hardware repair specialists working on PS5 consoles that fail to boot are finding the problem is caused by the liquid metal thermal interface Sony used on the custom AMD Zen 2 CPU.
When the PS5 is oriented in a vertical position, over time the liquid metal is moving and spilling out on to the components surrounding the CPU. This also means the liquid metal is no longer evenly spread across the chip it’s meant to help cool.

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PlayStation VR2 will officially be released on February 22, 2023, for $549.99, and pre-orders will begin on November 15. IGN reports: As revealed by the PlayStation.Blog, PlayStation VR2 will include the PS VR2 headset, PS VR2 Sense controllers, and stereo headphones. There will also be a PlayStation VR2 Horizon Call of the Mountain bundle that will retail for $599.99, and it will include everything from the standard edition plus a PlayStation Store voucher code for Horizon Call of the Mountain. Also launching on February 22 will be the PlayStation VR2 Sense controller charging station, which allows players to charge their controllers “through a simple click-in design, without having to connect to a PS5 console — freeing up the console’s USB ports.”

Sony also revealed 11 new titles headed to PS VR2 in 2023, and they include The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR, Crossfire: Sierra Squad, The Light Brigade, Cities VR – Enhanced Edition, Cosmonious High, Hello Neighbor: Search and Rescue, Jurassic World Aftermath Collection, Pistol Whip VR, Zenith: The Last City, After the Fall, and Tentacular. While we don’t have a full launch line-up quite yet, Sony did confirm that it is “expecting more than 20 titles” on February 22. You can preorder the system on November 15. Those interested can register today to get ready.

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PlayStation boss Jim Ryan reportedly flew to Brussels last month to meet with European Union regulators currently scrutinizing Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The visit was first reported by Dealreporter sources (paywalled). Video Game Chronicle reports: As has been widely publicized in recent weeks, PlayStation’s concerns over the deal are around the future release arrangements for the Call of Duty series — which is regularly PlayStation’s annual best-seller — and whether it will be pulled from their platforms. Google is also said to have voiced its concerns to EU regulators, according to the same sources.

Last month, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said Microsoft had committed to making Call of Duty available on PlayStation for “several more years” after Sony’s current marketing deal with Activision expires. However, SIE CEO Ryan, who is reportedly seeking access to future Call of Duty games on equal terms and in perpetuity, responded publicly by calling Microsoft’s proposal for keeping the series on PlayStation consoles “inadequate on many levels.” “By giving Microsoft control of Activision games like Call of Duty, this deal would have major negative implications for gamers and the future of the gaming industry,” Sony claimed. “We want to guarantee PlayStation gamers continue to have the highest quality gaming experience, and we appreciate the CMA’s focus on protecting gamers.”

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Sony said Tuesday that Nobuyuki Idei, its former chairman and CEO who led the Japanese giant’s push into the digital network business, has died of liver failure. He was 84. Kyodo News reports: In addition to enhancing Sony’s presence in the digital and communications fields, he also focused on the entertainment business, such as movies, music and game consoles, laying the foundation for its current operations. Idei joined Sony in 1960, becoming president in 1995 and CEO in 1998. He served as both chairman and chief executive from 2000 to 2005. He stepped down as chairman and CEO amid lackluster sales in its appliance business, making headlines for naming Howard Stringer as his successor at a time when it was still rare for a Japanese company to be led by a non-Japanese CEO. Idei also contributed to the advancement of the internet environment in Japan, having been appointed to head the government’s IT strategy council in 2000. […]

Under Idei’s tenure as CEO, the conglomerate launched its Vaio-brand personal computers and domestic internet service provider So-net. It also ventured into online-based banking services and the nonlife insurance business. But after its earlier success with sales of bulky CRT televisions, Sony was slow to transition to flat screens and was outpaced amid intense competition with South Korean and other overseas rival manufacturers. Company stocks plunged in 2003 in what was referred to as the “Sony shock,” and sluggish growth for much of the following decade led Sony to focus on corporate restructuring initiatives.

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bbsguru writes: Sony/PlayStation has been taking a lot of heat for making the new Gran Turismo 7 more dependent on microtransactions. Gamers say the well-reviewed game had taken advantage of those reviews by waiting until after it was released to jack up the cost of playing the game. Acceptance wasn’t improved by the more-than-a-day outage that accompanied the changes. [To make matters worse, Gran Turismo 7 owners weren’t even able to play single player because the DRM servers that require an online check to play the game went down.] After several tentative responses, Sony is [finally] paying out, “gifting players with a million in-game credits and outlining the near-term updates for Gran Turismo 7 that will address the problems,” writes Eurogamer’s Martin Robinson. “We want to thank you for your continued patience and valuable feedback as we grow and evolve GT7 to make it as enjoyable and rewarding for as many players as possible,” wrote series creator Kazunori Yamauchi in a blog post. “We always want to keep communication lines open with our community so that we can work together to build the best racing experience possible.”

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