At the price at which it is currently sold, the PS5 would cost Sony more to manufacture than it would actually bring in. A logic to consider all the same with regard to the games and services sold, which themselves more than compensate for the losses...
As we know, game consoles often have an exceptional price-performance ratio; and the PlayStation 5 is no exception.
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The PS5 sold “at a loss”
In its latest quarterly financial report, Sony says it sold over 4,5 million PS5s between its release date (November 12, 2020) and the end of last year. A success that filled the coffers of the Japanese group? Not in the short term anyway.
And for good reason, we learn that the strategic price positioning of the PS5 is lower than the production costs of the console. Obviously, this is not really a surprise, given the technical sheet of Sony's latest, equipped with a particularly fast SSD, a powerful GPU, and yet sold cheaper than an NVIDIA GeForce RTX graphics card. 3070 alone.
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Sale of games, subscriptions and accessories
But why would Sony agree to sell its PS5s at a loss? The manufacturer's objective is in fact to make it as accessible as possible to equip households on a massive scale. A mission to which the PS5 Digital Edition also contributes, which sets the entry price for the new generation of PlayStation at "only" 400 euros.
However, once the fleet is installed, Sony can earn money and generate significant revenue by involving the rest of the PlayStation ecosystem: accessories (controllers, cameras, headsets, etc.), games (especially first parties) and services (PlayStation Plus, PS Now).
The Japanese giant has also communicated extremely positive results for its PlayStation division during the last quarter, driven in particular by online games and services, which generate a turnover but above all a profit up sharply compared to the last year. Sony can therefore afford to lose a few euros each time a PS5 is sold, the latter will ultimately bring him much more in the long term.
