Sony Hopes PS5 Will Beat PS4’s Second Fiscal Year Despite Challenges; Talks Anime + Games Synergy

Today, during Sony’s quarterly Q&A for media representatives, chief financial officer Hiroki Totoki discussed the future of PS5 and the interaction between the games business and the anime business.

Totoki-san that Sony expects that the the strong demand for PS5 will continue during the next fiscal year (between April 2021 and March 2022).

The company would like to exceed with PS5 the number of PS4 shipped during its second fiscal year (14.8 million units). The level of demand from customers is very high.

Yet, while Sony is trying to increase its production capacity, the global shortage of semiconductors is creating difficulties.

That being said, Sony is doing its best to exceed the original plan in terms of shipments.

Totoki-san also added that in terms of the next fiscal year, the PS5 will still have a negative margin (basically being sold at a loss), but Sony has other peripherals, devices, and controllers for sale.

Sony thinks in terms of hardware overall, and couniting everything the impact is pretty much neutral.

While negative margins should be avoided, they’re not the only measurement. Software and services are growing, The evaluation is done in aggregate adding those to the equation.

Speaking of the acquisition of Crunchyroll, Totoki-san mentioned that the Anime market has been growing a lot over the latest five years, especially in the overseas market. That’s why Sony wanted to enter that market to accelerate its own growth.

That being said, according to Sony’s internal investigation there is a high level of affinity between the users’ enjoying games and animation. Cross-sale opportunities going forward can be expected and the company has high expectations for this.

Specific ways on how to achieve it are being discussed internally and more information might be revealed early next fiscal year.

Speaking of the investment in Epic Games, the keywords are real-time, 3D, and social entertainment. It’s a new business domain and Sony’s technology and content and Epic’s platform show a very high affinity and compatibility.

Sony is discussing with Epic across multiple of its business units and more specifics will be shared in the future.

If you’d like to learn more about Sony’s financial performance (and PlayStation’s successful quarter) on top of official shipment numbers for PS5 and PS4, you can check out our dedicated article.