PlayStation 4 has already begun to make Sony a profit

Game consoles, as a rule, the first few years of their lives bring the company-developer exclusively losses. So this business was arranged until today: the console was sold in the negative, and the profit came from the sale of games. Sony seems to have managed to change this market formula.

Indeed, the PlayStation 3 sold for less than its cost of almost $ 800, and cost $ 499-599, depending on the size of the built-in hard drive. Considering the huge investments in the launch of the new console, Sony had to significantly reduce the cost of the console's production process and release a couple of its revisions in a new form factor, before the PlayStation 3 began to bring the company at least a small profit. This happened only a few years after the start of its sales in 2006.

The story of the not very rosy launch of the PS3, which was accompanied by an uncompetitive price compared to the Microsoft console, some technical problems and the complexity of developing games for it, led to the fact that Sony suffered huge losses in the gaming sector. And it seems that the Japanese company has made certain conclusions for itself.

PS4 was initially cheaper than the Xbox One console for $ 100, and only this summer, Microsoft will reduce the price of its console, removing the Kinect sensor from the kit. Meanwhile, Sony has already paid for the development costs of the PlayStation 4, and even began to sell it in a plus, that is, above the cost, which is a real miracle for the console market. Specialists who calculated the cost of producing new consoles, came to the conclusion that both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One actually cost $ 381 and $ 471, respectively, and taking into account the additional costs of marketing, packaging, delivery, maintenance and much, much more, their The cost absolutely exceeds the one that is written on the store price tags. It turns out that Sony managed somehow to adjust the logistics and optimize its production, so that the total cost of the Japanese console fell below $ 399. And for the sake of lower prices, the American competitor had to abandon an important component of its gaming ecosystem, Kinect.

“It was an incredibly successful launch, but the key to long-term success is the constant build-up of our user base,” said President Kazuo Hirai, Sony, told reporters. which sold 20.5 million copies. PlayStation 4 already brings us profit from the sale of each console, which is very different from our approach to the PS3 business. ”

Since the launch of the console in November 2013, Sony has been able to sell more than 7 million PS4 worldwide (it can be assumed that the number of prefixes sold currently exceeds 8.5 million). According to research by the analytical agency NPD, the new Sony console ranks first in sales for the fourth month in a row, leaving the competitive Xbox One platform far behind.

Despite the fact that Sony recently reported a loss of $ 1.26 billion, the launch of a new game console helped increase its net profit by 14.3%. The game segment of the company brought 78 million dollars in losses, but you should not pay attention to it, because when you launch a new platform, any company always incurs quite impressive costs. The next year, Sony plans to re-enter plus thanks to its gaming and mobile divisions.

An important role in the growth of profits was played by the fact that more than half of the owners of PS4 paid for the connection of the PlayStation Plus service, which allows receiving new games every month, as well as access to multiplayer features. Approximately 52 million people are currently using PS3, PS4 and PS Vita network services, while 4.5 million users have downloaded the PlayStation App mobile app.

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/games/playstation-4-uzhe-nachala-prinosit-kompanii-sony-pribyl.html.