Sony expects PS5 sales to slow down, reveals Spider-Man 2 shipped ten million copies

Console continues to trail predecessor’s sales

Sony’s latest financial report is out and revealed that Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 cracked a most impressive sales milestone a little over 100 days after its launch last year: Insomniac’s latest superhero adventure sold over ten million units in this timeframe.

It was able to sell 2.5 million copies on launch day, becoming the fastest-selling first-party title in Sony’s history, and then cracked five million on its eleventh day out, so it continued to sell at quite a strong pace since then. Only God of War Ragnarök reached the ten million milestone quicker, with Sony reporting eleven million sales 75 days after the game was released.

The PS5 shipped 8.2 million units in the third quarter of FY2023, a plus of 1.1 million compared to the same period in the previous year. Sony’s latest console now totals 54.8 million units sold, which is around 2.4 million less than the PS4 has at the same point after its own launch. Sony expects console sales to slow down from here, decreasing its FY2023 forecast for the gaming segment by 5% due to predicted “lower unit sales.”

The PS5 is selling well, but struggles to catch the PS4's pace / Sony

No major first-party franchise releases before April 2025

Aside from lower hardware sales, Sony also predicted lower first-party software sales as it doesn’t plan for any major franchise releases in the upcoming fiscal year, which will end on March 31, 2025 – so no surprise launches for God of War, Spider-Man, and so on. Big projects like this “are currently under development,” according to Sony’s COO and CFO Hiroki Totoki.

“Regarding the PlayStation 5 hardware, which will enter its fifth year since launch, partially due to its entering the latter half of the console cycle, we aim to optimize sales with a greater emphasis on balance with profits, so we anticipate a gradual decline in unit sales from next fiscal year onwards,” the executive commented.

At least third-party sales are expected to grow alongside the total number of PS5 units sold. 

In terms of active PlayStation Network users, Sony reported an increase of eleven million players compared to the previous year’s third quarter with 123 million monthly active users on PSN.

Hiroki Totoki also admitted that the number of PS Plus subscribers may fall in the wake of Sony hiking up the membership price: “In network services, we expect subscribers to be on par with this fiscal year or slightly less due to the impact of price revision we implemented in this fiscal year, but we expect sales to gradually expand due to a shift to attractive premium services.”

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