Sony says they are now measuring success in other ways than selling consoles

As we reported earlier this week, Sony delivered its latest financial report the other day, covering both the most recent quarter (January-March) and also a summary of the 2023 fiscal year. This has brought several exciting news, including the fact that Sony is now adopting a new way of measuring success.

For the past two generations, console sales have been the most important parameter for Sony, but the company's Financial General Manager Sadahiko Hayakawa says that it is now measuring success in a different way, where playing time is much more important, adding that "the PlayStation business model has changed significantly since the launch of the PS4":

"The business model up to and including the PlayStation 3 was focused on increasing the number of software units sold in relation to newly sold hardware for each console generation. After a transition period during the PS4 generation, the PS5 model has shifted to where playtime on platform has increased due to expansion of the user community beyond console generations. Due to this change in business model, during the PS4 for generation, we were able to significantly grow profits in this segment, thanks to rapid digitalization and the expansion of network services."

Hayakawa also says that he expects the PlayStation 5 to decline in terms of sales in the future, but that they are instead aiming to get more active players for a longer period of time (which explains Sony's strong live service investments this generation), which will be able to generate higher revenue:

"As we enter the second half of the console cycle, we expect the number of new PS5 units sold to gradually decline. However, by steadily maintaining and expanding the consistently increased number of active users and user engagement while also strengthening control over business costs, we believe that we will be able to steadily increase sales and profits on the PS platform going forward."

The statement is somewhat reminiscent of what Phil Spencer said many years ago when, in connection with the initiative to release all Xbox games for PC, he made it clear that it was more important for Microsoft to reach many players than to sell many consoles.

How do you see it yourself, is Sony's financial General Manager right, or should it still be selling as many consoles as possible that is most important to them?

Thanks, Wccftech.