^hah hah. they just met their 10 million forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31st 2009.

anything above 10mil would mean price cut 20-40% above that would sugest price cut at E3

The said: ^hah hah. they just met their 10 million forecast for the fiscal year ending March 31st 2009.

But sales are lower this year than last year, and that will continue to be the case until if/when they make a price cut. So any potential price cut has to not just compensate for that, but boost sales by a lot to for 14-15 million predictions to come true.

I don't think Sony would be so bold to predict that level of sales in this environment.

 

10M??

OK I'm going to try to make this discussion a lot simpler.

Here are the sales during the last fiscal year, separated in three periods from VGC data:

April-October 2008 (pre-holiday): 5 million
November-December 2008 (holiday season): 3.1 million
January-March 2009 (Q1): 2 million

Which gives a total of 10.1 million.

For those who are predicting numbers around 15 million (and anyone else who wants to), could you specifiy what you think it will sell for the corresponding periods of this fiscal year?

 

You guys shouldn't just focus on PS3...the PSP and PS2 expectations will determine whether or not they can cut price on PS3.

For the current year (ending March 2009) they expected 250m games to be sold to retailers on PS3, PS2, and PSP. The split is something like 105m PS3, 90m PS2, 55m PSP.

Worldwide, the PS3 software figure is up about 50m from last year, but essentially offset by flat PSP software shipments and a 65m shipment decline in PS2 software.

For Sony hardware the final projections for the March 2009 year were 8.0m PS2s worldwide, 10.0m PS3s worldwide, and 15.0m PSPs worldwide. Nintendo shipped 31.18m DS, and 25.39m Wii over the same period, while Microsoft shipped 11.3m Xbox 360s.

If Sony has a new PSP model which it believes will reinvigorate software shipments I think we'll see something like this:

PS3 - 12.5m / 140m ($50 price cut)

PSP - 14m / 70m

PS2 - 5.5m / 55m

That's 265m games, and 32m units of hardware, vs. 250m games, 33m units of hardware. Games are more profitable, so they could pitch it as growth. The 12.5m figure assumes PS3 has a price cut in early October which can be, at least to some degree offset by reinvigorating the PSP market.

 

If they don't have a new PSP, this probably the best they can do. You could just about justify a $100 PS3 price cut (2.5m * $100 less revenue, or $250m less revenue, on the 20m extra games sold at $60 ($1.2b) with Sony getting probably a quarter to a third of that as profit from either its own games or liscencing fees:

PS3 - 15m / 160m ($100 price cut)

PSP - 11.5m / 50m

PS2 - 5.5m / 55m

 

Absolute worst case scenario for the 3/2010 year is probably:

PS3 - 11m / 120m (no price cut)

PSP - 11.5m / 40m (new model exists, costs too much, digital distribution hurts retailers, liscencing fees)

PS2 - 4.0m / 35m (Sony, developers, and stores largely abandon PS2 as 360/DS/Wii/PS3 libraries grow)

 

I know this is a long way off, but the year ending March 2011 actually interests me for Sony. PS2 will be dead in terms of providing relevant revenue to Sony, PS3 will probably be up, but if there is a new PSP model, and not a new PSP Sony probably has to be re-allocating teams to PSP2/PS4 in this time frame and developing both so they'll be theoretically getting less revenue as R & D costs increase rapidly again.

FY 3/2011 could easily be:

PS3 - 11.5m (down slightly), 165m (up slightly)

PSP - 10m (down slightly), 40m (down slightly)

PS2 - 2.0m (down sharply), 15m (down sharply)

Shipping 250m+ games in a year each year seemed to be what Sony had to do in about ~1998-2005 to stay profitable in gaming. But with PS4 probably not launching by March 2011, I think there is a real chance Playstation system software shipments will dip below 200m in the year ending March 2012.

@TheSource: One comment:

What does the 2.5m number correspond to? Unless that hypothetical price cut comes very late, there will surely be time to sell much more than 2.5 million PS3s before the end of the fiscal year. If it happened before the holidays for example, they could easily sell 6 million or more PS3s in Nov-Mar (of which at least 4 million would be sold anyway), resulting in $400-$600m less revenue from hardware depending on how you want to calculate it.

 

A quick question for TheSource, you expect PS3 YoY to increase without a pricecut (~1.5mil)?

^but of course, just consider this FISCAL year, they'll be releasing (for like SURE) games like God of War 3 and Final Fantasy 13. Common sense and a little bit of knowledge tells me that alone is enough to have better sales, price cut or not. But the price-cut is coming too.

I figured 15m PS3s on a worldwide October $100 price cut vs. 12.5m PS3s on a $50 price cut or a targetted $100 price cut.

Honestly though I don't think Sony feels it needs to cut price in any region but the Americas.

Obviously the revenue calculations vary based on how many games they sell to make up for it. Their game software projections for PS3 may be lower than I suggested because the PAL launch in March 2007 lifted game usage rates a tiny bit worldwide in the March 2008 year...without that kind of oomph, there would have been a drop to 4 games bought per PS3 user in the year/90m games instead or rising to 105m and 4.6 from 4.5.  So if the rate drops harder than usual, to say 3.5 then they'll only ship ~125m PS3 games on 12.5m PS3s in the year.