The PlayStation 5 is entering the final stages of its life cycle, and Sony has announced that it will not be releasing games from its most popular franchises this year.
The PlayStation 5 has already entered the “second half of its life cycle,” as Hiroki Totoki, Sony’s chief financial officer, put it, after the company reported results from its final quarter of 2024, in which it was revealed that the console had already reached 54.8 million units sold. units.
Results that did not meet their expectations of being able to equal or exceed the results achieved by the PlayStation 4 to date. For this reason, the Japanese company has already lowered its PS5 sales forecast for this fiscal year from 25 million to 21 million units.
“…we intend to optimize sales, paying more attention to the balance with profit, so we predict a gradual decline in sales starting next year,” he explained.
Additionally, the release of the slim version could indicate that we are already at least halfway through the ninth generation, just over 3 years from the new PS5 and Xbox Series console launching sometime in 2028.
We won’t see any of the major PlayStation franchises in 2024.
Likewise, Totoki confirmed that, unfortunately, there are no plans to release games from any major saga (God of War, Horizon, Uncharted, Ratchet & Clank, etc.) during the next fiscal year (which begins April 1, 2024 . and ends April 1, 2024). March 31, 2025), so we can lower our expectations for any major launch.
Instead, games like Stellar Blade or smaller franchises (like the Until Dawn remake, Helldivers 2, or some game that hasn’t been announced yet) are aiming to be the strong cards Sony faces in 2024. Despite this, the executive confirmed that they have several large projects in development and are committed to producing high-quality games as well as developing games as a service, which have not yet been well received by the gaming community.
Likewise, they expect that “third-party software sales will continue to grow due to the expansion of the PlayStation 5 player base and user engagement levels. In terms of our services, we expect subscriber numbers to be at or slightly below this financial year’s levels due to the impact of our pricing review, but we expect sales to gradually improve as a result of the shift to more attractive premium services.”
What are your thoughts on this, do you think PlayStation will still have a good year or will be surpassed by Xbox?
Watch the video
