Sony Group Corporation Announces No Plans For Major Franchise Release on PS5 Next Fiscal Year

In the recent third-quarter earnings report, Sony Group Corporation has expressed that there are no plans to release more major franchise titles on the PS5.

Sony has recently announced their third-quarter earnings report, revealing that major franchise releases have been ruled out for the next fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2025. 

“Regarding first-party software, we aim to continue to focus on producing high-quality works and developing live service games”, said CFO of Sony, Hiroki Totoki. “But while major projects are currently under development, we do not plan to release any new major existing franchise titles next fiscal year like God of War Ragnarök and Marvelʼs Spider-Man.”

They have also stated that even though acquisition costs would be lighter, they expect profit from first-party software to decline due to the decrease in sales.

The announcement of no major franchise titles for the PS5 came after Sony confirmed that the console has failed to meet sales expectations despite aggressive promotion, with 8.2 million units shipped for the third quarter, up from the 7.1 million from the previous fiscal year, short from hitting the 25 million shipment target previously set.

With the current statistics, Sony lowered their full-year forecast for the PS5 to 21 million units, 4 million units short of their original goal.

According to Bloomberg, Sony senior Vice President Naomi Matsuoka said that the company expects sales for the PS5 to gradually decline in the next fiscal year.

“Looking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,” Matsuoka said. “As such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.”

Despite sales for the PS5 not meeting expectations, first-party software such as Marvelʼs Spider-Man 2 has been performing rather well, exceeding 10 million copies sold on the PS5 as of February 4th, 2024.

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