PlayStation sales slip to $7.1bn as supply shortages continue
James Batchelor
Editor-in-Chief
Wednesday 2nd February 2022
Sony Corporation
Sony Interactive Entertainment
Sony continues to suffer from PlayStation 5's supply issues, with sales for its games division during the holiday quarter dipping 8% year-on-year.
The company's Game & Network Services segment, which handles PlayStation, reported sales for the three months ended December 31 at ¥813.3 billion ($7.1 billion) -- down from ¥883.2 billion ($7.7 billion) in the same period last year.
This was attributed to the decrease in hardware and peripherals sales, primarily due to the shortage of components -- especially semiconductors -- that hampers the PS5 supply line.
There were also decreases in sales of non-first party titles and add-on content, as well as first-party sales.
This was to be expected; in the same quarter last year, PS5 benefited from a launch line-up that included Sony-published titles such as Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. This year's holiday quarter was due to see the arrival of Horizon: Forbidden West, but that game was delayed until later this month.
Despite the supply constraints, Sony shipped 3.9 million PS5 units in the quarter -- lower than the 4.5 million in the console's launch quarter, but bringing lifetime shipments up to 17.3million.
Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad notes that this is behind the 20.2 million PS4 achieved in the same period after its own launch. It's also behind the 22.6 million Sony hoped to ship by March 31, 2022 -- this forecast has now been lowered to 19.3 million.
Meanwhile, PS4 continues to ship, with 200,000 units entering the channel during the past quarter. Sony recently disputed reports that the console was due to be discontinued, following
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