Sony shipped more than 4.5 million PlayStation 5s from launch on November 12 to the end of the year, but it took a loss on sales because the ‘strategic price point’ of the PS5 is lower than it cost to manufacture it.
The announcement was part of Sony’s quarterly investor report, released in Japan earlier today. The losses on PS5 sales were not specifically stated – and it was part of an overall Game & Network Services segment with an increase of 26.7 billion yen ($ 2.5 billion) in operating revenue in the same quarter in 2019 .
Sony’s PlayStation revenue from game sales (both PS4 and PS5, add-on content included) plus larger profit margins on the outgoing PlayStation 4 made up for more than a deficit.
By comparison, the PlayStation 4 sold more than 4.2 million units from its launch in November 2013 until the end of that year. The company said in November that the new PlayStation 5 faces an unprecedented demand, making its availability scarce, although more PS5s were available, in whole numbers, than their predecessor. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X faced the same problem, and the company’s chief financial officer told investors in November that a shortage of consoles could last until April.
Bloomberg reported as early as February 2020 that scarce components had increased the manufacturing cost of the PlayStation 5 to $ 450. Analyst Michael Pachter speculated in an interview in October that Sony would go straight to the $ 499 PlayStation 5, but lose money on the $ 399 Digital Edition that has an optical drive.
Elsewhere in Sony’s financial report, the company increased its forecast sales and operating revenue for the PlayStation division over the financial year ending in March. Sony now expects another 30 billion yen ($ 285 million) in sales from its Game & Network Services segment, and an additional 40 billion yen ($ 380 million) in operating revenue for the year.
Sony also reported a PlayStation Plus subscriber base of 47.4 million users, with 114 million monthly active users of the service by the end of the year.