PotentHerbs said:
Sony reports software sold for each quarter, as you can see on pg.9, which is separated from revenue generated: They explicitly state software unit sales. |
Yes, I know. And Sony does not sell software units to consumers via retailers. They sell software TO retailers, who then sell to consumers. Sony's reported sales here are: Shipped/sold-in to retailers + digital sold via PSN + physical sold via their store.
Walmart selling me a copy of TLOU is not a sale for Sony, it is a sale for Walmart. Walmart buying 500,000 physical copies of TLOU from Sony is a sale for Sony. That is what they record as a sale, that is what they record revenue on, and that is what they report in the chart you linked. They use the same logic for hardware (and the equivalent hardware figures are also right there in the same chart -- 7.8M PS5s sold-in to retailers/"shipped").
I work in FP&A/Corp Strat my friend, alongside the IR group. We can't present official metrics in public quarterly financials on how much of our partners are selling unless they present on it and we would have to differentiate/specify what's what (which partner/retailer, how much from each, etc.). But we can comment on external and/or hybrid estimates of data in a separate commentary alongside financial results as long as its specified that its estimates via other trackers (you see Nintendo do this in their supplementary comments/slides, but not in presented metrics).
