Sony’s $499 PS5 console is no longer selling at a loss. Bloomberg reported that Sony’s Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki shared the news, just a week after the company announced that it had sold 10 million PS5 consoles. Although the price of the PS5 with an optical drive is no longer lower than the production cost, it is reported that the lower price and the $399 digital version of the PS5 without an optical disc are also expected to allow Sony’s material related losses to be sold by other hardware such as accessories and The profits of the old PS4 are offset.
Sony sold 500,000 PS4 game consoles in the most recent quarter, bringing the final sales volume of this device to an impressive 116.4 million units. It took years for Sony to stop loss-making PS3 sales, but the company stopped loss-making sales about 6 months after the PS4 debut in 2013. The PS5 took a little longer, but it obviously did not repeat the expensive practices of the PS3, although early reports showed that Sony had encountered difficulties in pricing the PS5 due to expensive parts.
Microsoft revealed earlier this year that sales of its Xbox game consoles are at a loss, and pure hardware alone cannot achieve profitability. Microsoft did not report the performance of hardware sales early in the Xbox One life cycle, but an Xbox executive revealed in the Epic v. Apple trial that Microsoft has achieved profitability through game sales and online service subscriptions.
Sony today also reported its highest-ever first-quarter PlayStation revenue and its second-highest revenue record in the non-holiday season. There are also 104 million monthly active users on the PlayStation network, spending an average of US$37.09 per person in the first quarter of 2021, involving digital software, add-ons, and services.
