Sony Computer Entertainment has published its new financial report for the quarter ended this December 31 with great results in income and profits. The Japanese company has reported that PlayStation 4 sales already reached 108.9 million units sold, figures only exceeded by PS2, with more than 150 million, so it is consolidated in the second historical place. The flip side of the coin is that it is the worst amount of units sold annually since 2014.
The proximity of the new generation has become palpable in the PlayStation community. After the 2018 year where they dispatched 17.7 million units, 2019 closed with 14.7 million units sold. If we do not count 2013, where only a couple of months were computed when launching in November, 2019 was the worst year yet of PlayStation 4.
During the quarter that covered the months of October, November and December, Sony distributed a total of 6.1 million units (8.1 million units in the same period in 2018), far from the 10.81 million units reported by Nintendo with Switch.
Market analysts such as Daniel Ahmad, of Niko Partners, has made an estimate of the results assuming that the natural life cycle of PlayStation 4 is coming to an end and provides, unless Sony makes an official price drop for both PS4 Slim and PS4 Pro, that the units sold of the machine during the calendar year 2020 are “much lower” than those of 2019.
A total of 14.7 million PS4 units were shipped in 2019, down from 17.7 million in 2018.
Unless there is a price cut this year, it's likely that sales will decline sharper in 2020. pic.twitter.com/bPYzlZ4qpK
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) February 4, 2020
The implementation of PlayStation 4 hardware touching the ceiling does not mean that things are going in the wrong direction for Sony, however, since 2019 has been the second best historical year of the PlayStation brand in billing and the third best quarter of all time (September -December 2019). The consolidation and growth of the digital format (PSN) pave the way for Sony that is taking advantage of this huge installed user base, which does not stop users from buying games, DLC, expansions and other derived content. The figures speak for themselves: 49% of sales come from the digital market; A year ago the percentage was 37%. Sony recently reached 1.81 billion in software sales.
Regarding the forecast of the present and the next fiscal year, Sony has not altered the plans for March 31, when the 2019-2020 year will end, which remains at an expectation of 13.5 million units sold.
Sony’s future is known to everyone: PlayStation 5. The console, scheduled for the Christmas period of 2020, will have a remote control with haptic controls and backward compatibility, as well as elements such as an SSD storage memory and modular content facilities. Its price and output catalog is unknown today.
