Sony will release its results for the year ending March 2009 on May 14 (Japan time), which is about a day after this post.
Using strictly unit sales to retail, which Sony calls 'sell in' (shipments), and not production shipments which is just the amount of product the company makes and keeps a tally of to track expenses, Sony has shipped 136.3m PS2s roughly 10 times that many PS2 games, 50m PSPs through January alongside 200m PSP games through January, and 21.3m PS3s alongside 155.9m PS3s games.
For the year ending March 2009 Sony's final projections were game shipments of 250m across the three systems, PS2 shipments of 8m, PS3 shipments of 10m, and PSP shipments of 15m.
From April to December PS3 game shipments were 84.7m, while PS2 game shipments were 72.1m, and PSP game shipments were 39.1m. That totals 195.9m.
PSP software shipments seem to have been about 10-15m for the quarter.
PS2 software is largely incomplete on Vgchartz, but it probably totalled less than half of the previous Q4 total, given that quarter over quarter PS2 software rates have been dropping at an accelerating rate. I'd put it Q4 (Jan-March) down maybe 60% from last year to ~10m-15m as well based on the previous year over year drops. Q3 (Oct-Dec) dropped to 29.7m from 60.9 for software (50%+ drop), Q2 dropped to 23.1m from 38.0m (~40% drop), Q1 dropped to 19.3m from 31.1m (~38% drop)
PS3 software shipments were 16.8m last January to March. Off the top of my head, Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter IV were bigger than anything PS3 had release in that period, so I would expect PS3 software shipments up 20% to 19m-22m or so.
In Summary:
195.9m Playstation (PS2, PS3, PSP) games shipped in April-Dec 2008. It looks like 20m shipped for PS3 in Jan-March 2009 (105m for the year), 13m shipped for PSP (52m for the year), and roughly the same amount shipped for PS2, call it 14m for the quarter and 86m for the year. If you add the 105m + 86m + 52m you get 243m, which is within 3% of what Sony projected and essentially means they met their projection.
Overall Company Performance:
No idea. But the detiorating global economy adds unpredictability, while lower demand and a strong yen hurt most of their profit margins pretty hard. Sony could have lost signficantly more or less than the $1,500,000,000 they are expected to lose.
Next Fiscal Year:
General:
PS2 HW & SW will continue to decline, so if Sony has been subsidizing PS3 price cuts with PS2 revenue (its essentially gravy at this point), the price cut should come while PS2 revenues are still significant. PS2, in terms of hardware and software revenue (not profit) should dip to being about a $2.5b market, instead of the $4.6b market it was in the March 2009 fiscal year, if shipments of hardware were to fall to 5.5m worldwide (down from 8m) at a $100 price point (again this is simplified), with software shipments dipping to 50m, with an average price point of $40.
PS3 year over year shipments of hardware were down 10% in the Oct-Dec 2008 quarter, and should be down 10-15% in Jan-March 2009 quarter. The April to June 2008 quarter had Metal Gear Solid 4 and GTAIV. This quarter has nothing comparable. So PS3 shipments - software and hardware should be down. With a $50 price cut worldwide in October, or a targetted regional $100 price cut Sony can probably ship 12.5m PS3s in the year ending March 2010 even if they only ship 3.4m PS3s from April 1 to September 30 vs the 4.0m shipped in that time frame in 2008. 135m games for the period, up about 30% from the previous year looks reasonable.
PSP hardware shipments should be down for the year until the Christmas quarter when either a) the final big wave of titles comes b) the new model comes c) the system adopts the Iphone model of expensive hw and super cheap games. Or PSP hw shipments could drop fast if Sony unveils PSP2 for Christmas. But Q1 and Q2 of the March 2010 year should be down to 5.5m from 6.9m last year (down 20%). Q3 should be flat on a new model or new features, and Q4 flat. Thats 5.5m + 5.1m + 2.9 something, which is 13.5m for the year and down 10% from the current FY. Based on the dip in hardware, and the attrocious PSP piracry rates not to mention the all but certain move to digital distribution, PSP software will dip to ~45m for the year despite a hardware base of 63m+.
March 2010 Projection Summary:
PSP - 13.5m / ~64m LTD 45m SW / 255m SW LTD
PS2 - 5.5m / ~142.8m LTD 50m SW / ~1.45b?
PS3 - 12.5m / ~35.5m LTD 135m SW / 310m SW LTD
230m games for FY 3/2010, down from ~243m in FY 3/2009, 31m units of hw, down from 33m units of hw in FY 3/2009.
Company Health:
USA economy continues to reel and joblessness should top 10% in the next year. Europe and Japan are similar. Exchange rates are still bad. A PS3 price cut will further cut into Sony's thin margins, and with the PS2 market as a whole likely to dip to $2.5b in revenue on declining game liscencing fees, game shipments, and pricing, as well as demand (with Sony not seeing all the cash from it either) from $4.6b in FY 3/2009 Sony is probably going to have to rely on its other divisions as the gaming R & D costs will only go up with the PS2 share shrinking, PSP getting a new model or successor and early work begginning on PS4.
People are difficult to govern because they have too much knowledge.
When there are more laws, there are more criminals.
- Lao Tzu
