I think I heard someone on the net say it was roughly 2% of their revenue (abit less).....

Sony is not really setting the world on fire, by porting things to PC.

2% is 2.76~ Billion.

That's enough to fund the development of half a dozen exclusives and their advertising costs... Which is probably more than what Sony has even released for PS5 up to this point.

Insignificant next to 138~ billion, but not insignificant in pure monetary terms.

Sony did however with three ports... (God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Marvel's Spider-Man) generate approximately $700 million in a fiscal year, so that's a good return on what is essentially a low investment on already made content.

Consequently PC games tend to have long legs with old games that are decades old hitting the top of the sales charts during sale seasons, which probably says more about PC gamers and their desire for a good bargain.

While I am glad that the industry still has success stories, it speaks volumes that this is the first generation I have 0 interest in any of their products. I loved the PS4, it's one of my all time favourite systems (beaten only by nostalgia systems such as the PS and PSP) but as a long-time Sony fan, they dropped the ball with the PS5 when it comes to 1st party support. Here's hoping that they get backlash on track next gen, and until then I'm getting through on my massive indie backlog (mostly) on my Steam Deck.

Typical PR bullshit for people that don't understand the concept of inflation or the simple fact that PS5 is much much much more expensive than PS1 and PS2 (even when adjusted for inflation). So even if they sell the same amount of units, PS5 will have a much bigger revenue share. Doesn't say anything about profit though.

and would you like to explain why popularity isn't meaningless??

A company that sells a product to 100.000 people for $1000 profit each is much more successfull than a company that sells a product to 10.000.000 people for $5 profit each. How does popularity help here?

Let's face the facts, Playstation's popularity has declined hard since the PS2 days. None of their consoles have come close to these sales numbers even though the gaming market has multiplied several times since then. World population has increased a lot too obviously since then. In 2012 Sony sold 160 million PS2s while the world population was at 7bn people. 2.3% of all people worldwide owned a PS2. PS4 on the other hand sold only 117 million until 2022 with a world population of 7.8bn people. Only 1.5% bought the console.

Meanwhile PC gaming and especially mobile gaming have grown way past Playstation.

Playstation 1 &2 had crazy game library and Playstation 3 was very descent with the variety of games. But Playstation 4 and 5 are not in the same level. I even skiped playstation 5 and play on pc in this generation.

For those of you who remember the PS2 era and wish we'd get back there... this is why we won't. If you can make this sort of money by just pimping out digital services, you're going to do it unless you're some super idealistic company. And right now, I'm not so sure any company is idealistically sound enough to say, "We're going to go back to gaming first; gamers matter more than anything; we are a graming company, not a digital service company". Not even Nintendo is that sound anymore. Although they're probably still the highest-ranking in that department.

Hardware sales are only one aspect of popularity. Current Playstation, which doesn't come close to PS2 hardware sales wise, is a lot more popular and successful in other metrics.

Popularity obviously matters because for every 3rd party dollar sale, the platform holder gets a 30% cut. And popular consoles that sell a ton of software will be supported by virtually everyone. Publishers don't look at profitability to determine supporting a platform. They look at popularity: Install base, software sales (units and dollar) and active users. The other things they check are digital ratios and porting costs.

Profitability and popularity are correlated anyway. It's just that some companies are more efficient and/or self-reliant than others. Nintendo for instance typically sell hardware at higher profits margins, and like half of their console's software sales are from first party software that hold their prices well, which more than makes up for the relatively poor 3rd party sales.

I believe Sony has already established that this generation is the most profitable as well ( operation profit / loss ) reached 10 billion surpassing the PS4 generation.

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/ps5-is-the-most-profitable-playstation-console-sony-reveals/

2% Extra software revenue or 10% less PS5 owners? Sony and MS kill their own consoles by releasing on PC. At the end of the day console owners are way more profitable than selling a handful of extra units on PC.