Sony's 2021 Q1 Financial Statements.

[Wavergray]

Sony's 2021 Q1 Financial Statements are out and generally things seem to be going pretty good for the gaming branch even if things are slowing down.
My Key takeaways:
PS+ users are going down after the Covid boost, but still better that 2020 Q1 numbers. (46.3 million vs 45 million)
Number of PSN users is down even when compared to 2020 Q1 numbers. (104 million vs 114 million)
PS5 has sold 10 million units.
They don't want to talk about The Last of Us Part II sales numbers. With no updated sales numbers since 2 days after release.(4 million units as of 6/21/2020)
Miles Morales has sold 6.5 millions units as 7/18/2021
Returnal  has sold 560,000 units as 7/18/2021
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart has sold 1.1 millions units as 7/18/2021

Links to Financial Statements
https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/archive.html

https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/21q1_sony.pdf
https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/library/presen/er/pdf/21q1_supplement.pdf

[Slava]

1 hour ago, Wavergray said:

They don't want to talk about The Last of Us Part II sales numbers. With no updated sales numbers since 2 days after release.(4 million units as of 6/21/2020)

 

Yeah, what's up with that? I've been waiting for an update for a while.

Edited August 5, 2021 by Slava

[milanbarca82]

9 hours ago, Wavergray said:

Returnal  has sold 560,000 units as 7/18/2021

That's really a low number for an exclusive.  Is the game that hard that deterred people from buying it?

Edited August 6, 2021 by milanbarca82

[Rick_Sanchez]

27 minutes ago, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive. 

too many PS5's in the hands of scalpers and not enough in the hand of consumers.

[diskdocx]

32 minutes ago, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive.  Is the game that hard that deterred people from buying it?

 

4 minutes ago, Rick_Sanchez said:

too many PS5's in the hands of scalpers and not enough in the hand of consumers.

R&C has sold double in a shorter amount of time. It is also a short SP only game without that much replayability so I would have to think many copies are hitting the second (or third or fourth) hand market.

Dont get me wrong, R&C was great and I very much enjoyed it, by far the best PS5 exclusive to date, but those are still realistically issues that are going to lower sales, but despite that 10% of PS5 owners have bought R&C new - that’s pretty impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if 25% or more of PS5 owners have actually played it

 

While undoubtedly a chunk of consoles are scooped up by scalpers, I really don’t think it’s that big of an impact on sales. If those scalpers aren’t flipping the consoles, they aren’t going to keep snapping them up. There’s no point in hoarding them, that’s a diminishing asset.

 

So yes, I think Returnal took a sales hit primarily because of difficulty 

[EverythingOnFire]

23 minutes ago, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive. 

 

I thought the same thing at first, but for a horror/dark sci-fi game that also happens to be a new intellectual property, 560,000 sales in less than 3 months is pretty good. It's actually kind of impressive given the fact that the protagonist looks like an angry high school principal in all the adverts (no matter what some people may say, we all love a pretty face). We also need to take into account that there are only 10 million PS5's out in the wild. 

 

A random example: inFamous Second Son sold a little over 6 million total, which means roughly only 5.2% of PS4 owners bought it. At just 5% ownership, it's still the 15th best-selling PS4 game of all time (give or take a spot). Returnal isn't going to get anywhere near 6 million, but my point is that most exclusives don't do as well as a lot of us think they do. Most people are buying these consoles for CoD, GTA, a few sports titles, and that's it.

[Keyser Soze]

1 hour ago, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive.  Is the game that hard that deterred people from buying it?

maybe that number is for physical copies?

[communistwookiee]

37 minutes ago, Rick_Sanchez said:

too many PS5's in the hands of scalpers and not enough in the hand of consumers.

Sony knows exactly how many PS5s have been connected to the internet, and it's the overwhelming majority of them. While a lot of consoles have wound up in the hands of scummy resellers, the amount is being vastly overblown by the public.

[OmegaRejectz]

2 hours ago, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive.  Is the game that hard that deterred people from buying it?

You can't judge it just by the fact it's an exclusive. Also, it's on a platform that released less than a year ago. I'd say 5% of the install base is pretty decent. I feel the difficulty is almost not a factor at all. It's the fact it's a niche game, in a niche genre, developed by House Marque. They aren't Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, Sucker Punch, or Insomniac, they aren't going to sell millions and millions. I'd assume the game was a success in terms of reception and sales figures.

[Rozalia1]

On 05/08/2021 at 7:44 PM, Slava said:

Yeah, what's up with that? I've been waiting for an update for a while.

 

A certain section of people would remark that the reason would be that all the negative attention worked and caused sales after the listed period to collapse. Not impossible as it would be a reason to not talk about it, as announcing that the negativity worked promotes people doing it to future games they and anyone else promotes. 

 

On 06/08/2021 at 3:04 AM, milanbarca82 said:

That's really a low number for an exclusive.  Is the game that hard that deterred people from buying it?

 

It is a PS5 exclusive that is a new IP, a niche genre, released at the new more expensive price point, and has been been known to have some issues. I'm not so sure the difficulty impacted it. Maybe, but there are cases like say Dark Souls where "this stuff is hard" actually increased sales. Sony are likely happy with the numbers they got as the game was likely made on the cheap so doesn't require high sales numbers to turn a profit. 

[DaivRules]

55 minutes ago, Rozalia1 said:

A certain section of people would remark that the reason would be that all the negative attention worked and caused sales after the listed period to collapse.

People do like to make up whatever stories fit their fantasies, don’t they?

 

Especially when they can dismiss any lack of evidence as evidence of their conspiracy. 
 

[Rozalia1]

8 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

People do like to make up whatever stories fit their fantasies, don’t they?

 

Especially when they can dismiss any lack of evidence as evidence of their conspiracy. 

 

Certainly a pretty standard thing yeah. It might be the case but no way to know.

 

I myself have yet to buy the game as I was busy at the time it came out with other stuff and I'm waiting on talk of a PS5 version and also Factions, but it has been so long I may just pick it up some time soon.

[TheArcadeKid]

1 hour ago, DaivRules said:

People do like to make up whatever stories fit their fantasies, don’t they?

 

Especially when they can dismiss any lack of evidence as evidence of their conspiracy. 
 

If the conspiracy here is "TLOU Part II underperformed," I'm not so sure it's a fantasy. I can think of absolutely no other reason Sony would stay quiet on sales for so long.

 

That's not to say it flopped as hard as some would like - it probably didn't. But at this point it's a bit like Microsoft not announcing sales figures for Xbox consoles - everyone knows why.

[TJ_Solo]

16 minutes ago, TheArcadeKid said:

If the conspiracy here is "TLOU Part II underperformed," I'm not so sure it's a fantasy. I can think of absolutely no other reason Sony would stay quiet on sales for so long.

 

That's not to say it flopped as hard as some would like - it probably didn't. But at this point it's a bit like Microsoft not announcing sales figures for Xbox consoles - everyone knows why.

 

MS doesn't give sales numbers for any Xbox hardware or games.

Sony happened to not give final or later sales updates for 1 or 2 games.

 

I have no idea what is going on with TLOU2 but I recall hearing people claim the game failed so badly that Sony would fire Neil Druckmann last year.

Next thing I know Sony promoted Druckmann. That goes to show what people "know" about sales and any game's finicial performance.

Sales figures are nice to have and all but they don't define gaming as a hobby to me. I am only waiting to see what the Factions update will be and how it plays...not "sells".

 

Everyone knows why? Please explain what everyone knows since it has to be about what a group thinks and not what you personally want, think, or believe. 

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by TJ_Solo

[Conor]

Who really cares about sales for a game that released over a year ago? If you liked it- as I did- then take pride in the fact that you got enjoyment out of something, you don't need high sales figures to validate those feelings. If you didnt like it then move on, it really is not healthy to be dwelling on something you dislike over a year later and if you need validation for that then you may have a problem that goes deeper than a video game not going the way you wanted it to.

[TheArcadeKid]

2 minutes ago, TJ_Solo said:

 

MS doesn't give sales numbers for any Xbox hardware or games.

Sony happened to not give final or later sales updates for 1 or 2 games.

 

I have no idea what is going on with TLOU2 but I recall hearing people claim the game failed so badly that Sony would fire Neil Druckmann last year.

Next thing I know Sony promoted Druckmann. That goes to show what people "know" about sales and any game's finicial performance.

Sales figures are nice to have and all but they don't define gaming as a hobby to me. I am only waiting to see what the Factions update will be and how it plays...not "sells".

 

Everyone knows why? Please explain what everyone knows since it has to be about what a group thinks and not what you personally want, think, or believe. 

 

Microsoft stopped providing sales figures about two years after the launch of Xbox One, which had a fairly botched launch (especially in comparison with PS4) and lagged far behind it throughout last-gen. The obvious conclusion is that Microsoft doesn't want to officially disclose that its consoles sell worse than its closest competitor. If your conclusion is any different, I'd be happy to hear it.

 

Neil Druckmann was indeed promoted, but it doesn't reflect the performance of his game. Corey Barlog didn't receive a promotion after the phenomenally successful God of War, and Hideo Kojima was outed after Metal Gear Solid 5. All I'll say is that, assuming Sony went into damage control mode with TLOU Part II, Neil Druckmann was never going anywhere. Which is fine by me - I don't have a personal vendetta against the man.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in dissecting every little aspect of TLOU Part II to make it look bad. I personally didn't like it, but I'd be quite happy to know the game sold well and I'll also be playing the sequel, if they make one. But there really aren't any reasons Sony would choose to stay hush-hush over such a high profile game, other than because its sales figures are less than impressive. 

[Abby_TheLastofUs]

The most likely reason Sony hasn't released new sales figures for TLOU2 is because they are waiting for it to hit a big milestone. 

 

Based on how it charted (Consistently higher than Ghosts of Tsushima which had sold 6.5 million copies by March) and the most recent thing we have to something resembling its own sales data (November's Gamestat figures which had it with a player count of 7 million) we can estimate it's sales to be about 7 to 8 million at the absolute lowest. 

 

Look to Uncharted 4 for a comparison.

 

Uncharted 4 opened with 2.7 million in sales, the best selling launch for a PS4 title at the time. After that, Sony didn't give an update on its sales till CES 2017 which was in January. There, Sony said Uncharted 4 had sold 8.7 million copies.

 

Sony didn't give us an update on Uncharted 4 till it had more tripled its launch sales. Something similar should be expected from TLOU2. Both Naughty Dog games, both part of successful franchises, and both had record breaking openings. I'll also point out that Sony didn't give us an update on Uncharted 4's sales in any of their 2016 financial statements.   

 

And while it's not a Naughty Dog title, Sony's reporting on God of War's sales was similar. They announced the record breaking launch sales (3.1 million), then its sales at the end of launch month (5 million), and then nothing till it reached 10 million sales, which Jim Ryan announced at Sony's IR Day 2019, which was more than a year later.

 

My guess is that they are waiting for the game to hit upwards of 12 million sales before they announce something, and the earliest we can expect such an announcement is in September, on The Last of Us Day.

 

While sales for TLOU2 were probably frontloaded, there's no indication that it underperformed. Frequent sales updates directly from the company aren't common. 

 

There's actually a downside to how successful TLOU2 has been, with Sony prioritizing Naughty Dog to the detriment of other studios. 

 

 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Abby_TheLastofUs

[Slava]

Bruh. I already regret asking that question.

 

28 minutes ago, Abby_TheLastofUs said:

The most likely reason Sony hasn't released new sales figures for TLOU2 is because they are waiting for it to hit a big milestone. 

 

My guess is that they are waiting for the game to hit upwards of 12 million sales before they announce something, and the earliest we can expect such an announcement is in September, on The Last of Us Day.

 

Yeah, this reason probably makes most sense. 

 

As for Returnal, I don't think 560K copies in 3 months is a bad result for a next-gen exclusive rogue-like title. 

[TheArcadeKid]

17 minutes ago, Abby_TheLastofUs said:

My guess is that they are waiting for the game to hit upwards of 12 million sales before they announce something, and the earliest we can expect such an announcement is in September, on The Last of Us Day.

A fair point, and I'd certainly be interested to see if things go that way. There are disparities between the games you mentioned though - Uncharted 4 and God of War both received more sales updates within twelve months, and I'll also throw Ghost of Tsushima in there, which released very closely to TLOU Part II. I can think of no other Sony game that's gone this long without a sales update, and that does raise some eyebrows. 

[DaivRules]

2 hours ago, TheArcadeKid said:

If the conspiracy here is "TLOU Part II underperformed," I'm not so sure it's a fantasy. I can think of absolutely no other reason Sony would stay quiet on sales for so long.

 

That's not to say it flopped as hard as some would like - it probably didn't. But at this point it's a bit like Microsoft not announcing sales figures for Xbox consoles - everyone knows why.

Yes, making up stories just like that.

 

You don’t need to think of other reasons, the fact is: There is no reason given. That’s all anyone actually knows, everything else is fantasy and speculation. 
 

I know it’s hard for some people to just accept not being given an answer for something, but that’s just a them problem. 

[TheArcadeKid]

5 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

Yes, making up stories just like that.

 

You don’t need to think of other reasons, the fact is: There is no reason given. That’s all anyone actually knows, everything else is fantasy and speculation. 
 

I know it’s hard for some people to just accept not being given an answer for something, but that’s just a them problem. 

Who's making up stories? I'm suggesting that TLOU Part II underperformed based on the data I currently have, and Sony's continued reluctance to talk about it. It's a fair argument, and I've read some fair counterarguments. I'm still waiting on yours.

 

If you're happy to go through life taking everything at face value, no questions asked, that's your prerogative. I'll continue to debate the topics that interest me. There's no problem here - at least, not on my end.

[dieselmanchild]

3 hours ago, TheArcadeKid said:

If the conspiracy here is "TLOU Part II underperformed," I'm not so sure it's a fantasy. I can think of absolutely no other reason Sony would stay quiet on sales for so long.

This is my thinking as well. Sony likes to brag about their positive sales figures and when TLoU2 came out all the execs and journalists wouldn’t shut up about the record shattering sales on release. But after that… it’s been crickets. If the game ended up being a huge success long term you think they would still be proudly boasting about it and not closely guarding sales figures the way they have been.

 

Personally, I suspect that TLoU2 sales most likely fell short of expectations - possibly by a large margin. Selling 4 million copies right away and being the fastest selling PlayStation exclusive is massive accomplishment and nothing to sneeze at, but you also have to look at things in context. TLoU2 was a follow up to one of the best games of all time (which sold close to 20 million copies throughout its lifetime), and was one of the most hyped and marketed sequels I’ve ever seen, so of course it was going to have massive sales on release. The real measure of success is longterm sales.

 

If sales tapered off rapidly after the first week or two then I don’t see how the big executives and money men could view it as anything less than a disappointment. Either way I’m sure it made a ton of money, but they were probably expecting more. And if this was in fact the case, it would explain why they’ve been so strangely silent about the whole affair.

 

Right now it’s all just pure speculation and I could be completely wrong on this one. But my gut tells me it didn’t meet the expectations they had for it.

[DaivRules]

14 minutes ago, TheArcadeKid said:

Who's making up stories? I'm suggesting …

Yes, that’s making up a story. 
 

15 minutes ago, TheArcadeKid said:

I'm still waiting on yours.

I don’t need to make an argument because my only point was that the only fact we have is Sony didn’t release numbers. No further story making is needed. It’s the only fact we have about why: We don’t actually know. 
 

17 minutes ago, TheArcadeKid said:

If you're happy to go through life taking everything at face value, no questions asked, that's your prerogative.

Nice false dichotomy, falls in line with the rest of the logical fallacies you presented as things you know and only further proves my original point. 

 

[DrBloodmoney]

Not to put my head in the lion's mouth here...

 

but why would TLoU2 feature on Sony's 2021 Q1 financials at all, unless it was having either radically high, or radically low sales?

 

It came out in June 2020 - I would imagine the lack of mention means simply that it is neither over, nor under performing in relation to previous releases for a year old game 

 

I would have thought it would only be mentioned if the continuing sales were radically lower or higher than projections?

Edited August 7, 2021 by DrBloodmoney

[Helyx]

So, I might be retarded, but are these sales figures positive? Lower than expected?