Sony CFO Thinks Cloud Won’t Make Consoles Obsolete in Five Years; it’ll “Take Much Longer”

Today, during Sony‘s quarterly financial conference call for investors and analysts, Chief Financial Officer  Hiroki Totoki talked about the future.

We hear that Sony is cautious about “potential volatility in profitability” for PlayStation “due to the console cycle going forward.” Yet, they’re working to mitigate the volatility by leveraging the over 91.6 million units installed base of PS4.

Totoki-san was asked what could be the threats and opportunities for PlayStation five years from now.

Speaking about risks, Totoki-san explained that open-platform free-to-play games are becoming more widespread in the market, which could be a potential risk to the business.

Additionally games moving into the cloud, as an extreme example, could make physical hardware unnecessary. That being said. Totoki-san thinks it’ll take much longer [than five years] for this to happen.

To counter these trends Sony can offer advantageous revenue share and the most immersive experiences possible. Third-party partners are very much supportive of PlayStation, and this will help Sony to avoid being affected by the risks mentioned.

In terms of opportunities, the largest one is the increase in network services performance and recurring business. The PS4’s massive installed base and monthly active users in excess of ninety million are a strong point and leveraging the strength of the PS4 will expand the business and continue to generate profits.

Just today, Sony announced that the PS4 passed 94.2 Million Units shipped, making it officially the home console that shipped the highest number of units in 2018.