While the PS5 has been doing well for Sony, the company’s R&D teams have already started looking towards the future. Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Hideaki Nishino spoke about the future of PlayStation during a recent business segment meeting. According to VGC, Nishino also spoke about whether cloud gaming could be one of the avenues for the future of Sony’s consoles.
According to Nishino, while cloud streaming is a promising front, especially when it comes to the technology involved, network stability is still a sticking point for the company. Cloud streaming also tends to be more expensive for Sony itself when it comes to “cost per playtime”.
“Cloud streaming is progressing well from a technical standpoint, as we have demonstrated with [our] offerings, but end-to-end network stability is not in our control,” Nishino said. “And the higher cost per playtime compared to the traditional console model remains a challenge.”
“Cloud gaming is increasingly providing an additional option for players to access content, but our belief is that the majority of players continue to want to experience gaming through local execution without dependency on network conditions. And PS5 and PS5 Pro have validated this thesis, I believe.”
Nishino also noted that, while looking at the future is important, the Sony is also doing well with its current and older consoles. He specifically brings up the fact that 124 million monthly active users are still playing their games on a PS4, rather than rushing to upgrade to a PS5.
“We now have a large ecosystem of highly engaged players across both the PlayStation 5 and the PlayStation 4 generations. So naturally, therefore, there’s a huge interest in our next generation console strategy,” said Nishino. “While we cannot share further details at this stage, the future of the platform is top of mind. We are committed to exploring a new and enhanced way for players to engage with our content and services.”
Sony Interactive Entertainment SVP of finance and corporate development Lynn Azar echoed Nishino’s sentiments about having players across a host of different consoles when asked about the potential business impact of the next iteration of PlayStation consoles.
“As Nishino-san mentioned, we’re still exploring what the future of our platform would look like. So, therefore, whilst we cannot provide any further guidance on operating income in future years, I’d like to re-emphasize that our financial profile as a business has evolved in line with our strategy.”
Azar also pointed out that, at this point, most of the company’s revenue come from recurring sources, including in-game microtransactions and subscription services.
“So, we’ve reduced traditional cyclicality, as you describe it, by establishing a large ecosystem of players across both the PS5 and PS4 generations, which provides recurring revenues,” said Azar. “So, this has driven overall high and stable level of spend on content and services, which, by the way, now constitute over two-thirds of our revenue, providing a consistent, predictable, and profitable base of our revenue.”
While Sony has been coy about announcing any plans for its next-gen console, a statement from back in 2022 indicated that Sony was looking at releasing the PS6 after 2027.
