Sony’s Games And Network division will now focus on selling services rather than hardware, citing declining hardware sales. This was told to investors in a mid-term corporate strategy report.
As reported by Takashi Mochizuki of Wall Street Journal, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO John Kodera cited that the PS4 is “entering final phase of its life cycle”. The PS4 has sold 79 million units worldwide currently (we last reported on sales numbers when it sold more than 70 million ) and sales has slowly declining.
Sony is expecting to focus on selling more games, be it from new IPs (exciting!) or refreshing existing IPs- which they did magnificently with the new God Of War, now the fastest selling PS4 exclusive. Sony is also keen to expand PS Plus subscriber number to compensate for the slow growth until March 2021.
This news should start the discussion on whether the start of the new generation of consoles is looming soon. There should be new hardware in the works right now, but the question now lies on when will we start hearing Sony, and even Microsoft for that matter, to start talking about the new generation.