Today, Sony hosted its annual corporate strategy meeting, with CEO Kenishiro Yoshida and CFO Hiroki Totoki providing further details on plans for the PlayStation business.
Yoshida-san started the presentation mentioning that he believes the games business, created jointly by Sony’s Electronics and Music businesses, represents the greatest synergy the company created in the 20th century. Speaking of synergies, perhaps unsurprisingly, we heard that the TV show dedicated to The last of us it boosted sales of the game, as well as airplay for the song used in the show.
Following the example of Gran Turismo Sophy, Yoshida-san mentioned that AI is positioned as a technology that expands the creativity of creators, and Sony will continue to promote research and development along with social implementation.
We also got a reminder about Sony’s expansion in India, with mention of the recently announced India Hero Project which echoes the previously established China Hero Project which has already produced several successful games. Yoshida-san later mentioned that there is a great opportunity for growth in India, as it is a very young nation, demographically. Half of the population is under 30 years of age.
Totoki-san talked about the growth strategy for the PlayStation business, mentioning that a central factor is increasing the number of active users and the driver for that increase is the expansion of PS5 in the market and the strengthening and expansion of the game itself. briefcase.
Totoki-san reiterated that Sony shipped 6.3 million PS5 units during the fourth quarter of last fiscal year and continues to make more units at full capacity. Going forward, Sony intends to work with the publishing and development communities and PlayStation studios themselves to expand the content pipeline and deliver increasingly innovative and engaging gaming experiences. That will result in the growth of the installed base and the number of active users.
To expand the portfolio of first-party games, Sony will continue to incorporate Bungie’s knowledge post-acquisition, enhancing the ability to launch and operate live service games. On top of that, Sony also wants to increase the number of active users on PC in addition to PS5.
Curiously, Yoshida-san talked about the Super Mario Bros. Movie and the intellectual property of Nintendo.
“Recently, there is a movie theater in Roppongi and I watched Super Mario, I found wonderful IP entertainment content. I played Super Mario games 30 years ago, and it was very intense. A lovely IP can survive 50 or 100 years. That it’s something we’d like to invest in for sustainable growth and Kando.”
By the way, if you’re not familiar with it, “Kando” is a Japanese term brought up by former CEO Kazuo Hirai, and it indicates the idea of building excitement. Since then it has become one of Sony’s keywords.
Lastly, Totoki-san mentioned that due to advances in cloud infrastructure and technology in the long term, at some point, computing power may move to the cloud. Sony has been offering this type of service and continues to prepare for the future. Generative AI is also something Sony needs to focus on, but it’s important to be close to the creators and support them. Thinking carefully about how to use these technologies is one way to avoid risks.
If you want to find out more about PlayStation’s financial performance, you can check out the latest quarterly results via our dedicated article.