Sony’s value has reportedly dropped by around $10 billion following the company’s PS5 sales forecast for the year. Last week during an earnings call, Sony told investors that it expected PS5 sales to decline this year as there were “no major franchise titles” expected to release in 2024. As a result, Sony shares fell by as much as 8.4%.
A new report on CNBC calculated that the ‘disappointing’ PS5 sales forecast resulted in a value drop of around $10 billion for Sony. Jefferies equity analyst Atul Goyal told CNBC that the revised shipment forecast wasn’t nearly as disappointing as low level of operating margin. Goyal explained that the operating margins for PlayStation were at 12-13% over the last four years, though it has now dropped to its current margin of only 6% resulting in “almost near decade lows.”
“Their revenue on digital sales, add-on-content, digital-downloads are at all time highs and yet their margins are at decade-lows. This is just not acceptable,” said Goyal in the report.
Despite the lack of major franchise releases this year, Sony seems to still have a few heavy-hitting third-party exclusivity deals in place for 2024. Chief among them are Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, Stellar Blade, Rise of the Ronin and Lost Soul Aside. If previous reports are to be believed, then we could also see the launch of a new Astro Bot game this year.
That said, 2024 will likely be a very quiet year for PlayStation. The company’s first-party studios are hard at work on new games including Insomniac Games working on Marvel’s Wolverine, Sucker Punch Productions possibly developing a Ghost of Tsushima sequel, Santa Monica Studio rumoured to be making a new IP and Naughty Dog also working on multiple projects – one of them could be The Last of Us Part III. However, these titles are at least a few years away from release at this point.
Source: CNBC
