As an avid gamer and follower of the gaming industry, I have noticed a concerning trend in the sales of PlayStation 5 games. Despite the console breaking sales records, the sales of its games have dropped. According to data from Sony and Activision, the $70 price tag of new PS5 games may be a possible reason for this decline.
During Fiscal Year 2022, Sony generated $27 billion in revenue from PlayStation, with PS5 console hardware sales driving the over-performance. However, third-party game sales had dropped, with a marked 38.6 million year-over-year reduction in third-party titles sold on the PlayStation Store for the period.
Higher prices for new games may be leading to lower unit sales, as Activision’s data on Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 supports this trend. Despite the drop in unit sales, software revenues were at an all-time quarterly high of $2.387 billion during the Q3’22 period that coincided with Modern Warfare 2’s launch.
It is noteworthy that it does not appear that gamers are opting to subscribe to PlayStation Plus rather than buy full games. While PlayStation gamers are spending more money on the games they do buy, overall game unit sales being down is a worrying trend.
