June 28, 2016

http://time.com/4386270/sony-playstation-vue-tv-streaming-number-users/

PlayStation Vue, Sony’s bid to bring live TV to its PlayStation consoles as well as mobile devices and set-tops, may have lured as many as 120,000 subscribers since launching in March 2015. That’s according to sources speaking to Bloomberg, and comes on the heels of Sony rolling out Vue support for Roku’s popular line of multichannel streaming boxes.

When Vue launched, it was only available in a handful of major cities, limiting its appeal. But Sony gradually added more regions, including the smallish, corn-encircled hamlet I base from in flyover country (Northeastern Iowa). That still wasn’t enough to get me to buy and place pricey PlayStation consoles on all my TVs. But then Sony added Roku support last week, and I already have those on my up and downstairs screens, at which point spending $39.99 (a month) for the baseline 55 or so channels became a fait accompli.

Yes, 120,000 is still a pittance in traditional pay-TV terms. But Bloomberg reports Sling’s Dish Network has somewhere in the vicinity of 700,000 subscribers (after launching in February 2015–Vue’s rollout was much slower), which I think Bloomberg rightly reads as indication this bodes well for lower cost Internet TV package subscription services.

Very interesting times ahead ladies, gentlemen and everybody in between. Assuming things keep chugging along on the gaming side of things, Sonys concentrated attempt at establishing heavy hitting services will really poise the company for strong growth moving forward. Any users here pay for Vue yet?

It was tempting but I NEED Dish Anywhere. I abuse that service!

So Sony currently bringing in about $5m a year from this. They'd need to up that to around 1m subs for it to be really worth it which would bring in about $40m annually.

But I'd imagine they're targeting something like 10m subscribers which is 400m annually.

i imagine this service will grow at a compounded rate the first few years as word of mouth spreads. 

I know there's been a lot of predicting going on in regards to Sony, MS, and Nintendo ultimately going service only but I can't really see it with how the PlayStation is marketed - a central console hub that serves as the one stop multimedia device. With the variety of services that Sony does offer, there really isn't any need to give up a good thing with hardware sales. I feel like this paradigm only promotes brand loyalty and is probably why MS is willing to absorb any loss that the Xbox division brings in. 

I don't get your math....

$30/month for basic service x 1M subs = $30M/month and $360M/year in total revenue.

10M subs = $3.6B/anum @ $30/month.

The tiers are $30, $35 and $50 (or so). 

Didn't know they added Roku support. That's great news and should add accessibility to millions more homes over time. Hope to see it start snowballing in the future.

Sorry I'm from Europe so this service isn't targeted at me and thus I've only glanced at news regarding it.  

I assumed it was 30$ a year not per month.  In that case this is better as they should be pulling in $40m a year already.  

So if they can get that up to 1m subs we're talking a $400m revenue business.  

They'd only need 5m subs to take in $2bn revenue annually.  If Sony manage this all properly,  between ps plus,  ps VUE and ps now they could be making absolute bank 5 years from now.  

This is why they absorbed the loses the ps3 brought and didn't exit the market like many predicted. 

Ten million subscribers? That would make them the 5th largest tv provider in the US (probably 4th considering how quickly other providers are losing subscribers).

They should (and probably would be) happy with anywhere between 500K-1000K in the next 2-3 years.

I wouldn't get it anyway, cause I'm a Nintendo fan, but the only way I'm paying for TV (other than Netflix and prime) is if I can pay for however many channels I want. And it can't be a rip off because it's a small amount.

I know my house just switched to Vue. Can't beat $30/month for the lowest tier. Hopefully, they get A&E soon, as that's the only channel my wife misses. Though, our Roku has a A&E on demand, so it's not that big a deal.