On February 4, Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad tweeted that it summarized and released the 2021 financial report data of Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.
It can be seen that Sony's main business income is the highest, with its PlayStation business revenue reaching 24.87 billion US dollars (about 158.16 billion yuan), while Microsoft's game business revenue is 16.28 billion US dollars (about 103.53 billion yuan), and Nintendo's game business revenue is 15.3 billion US dollars (about 97.30 billion yuan).
It is worth noting that in terms of operating profit, Nintendo, which has a relatively low revenue, ranks first with 5.4 billion US dollars (about 34.34 billion yuan). Sony's games division made a profit of only $2.63 billion (about 16.72 billion yuan), and Xbox has not disclosed the relevant data.
However, the business priorities of the three companies are different, and Sony and Microsoft are integrated companies with a number of independent businesses. The data of the above "Big Three" is only used as a certain reference, and GameLook will further compare the three-party business and the latest achievements below.
A record-breaking record, NS sold 103.54 million units worldwide
Further, on February 3, Nintendo just released its financial report for the third quarter of fiscal 2022, that is, October to December 2021, once again revealing the brilliant results of Swicth and its games to the outside world.
According to the content, Nintendo's revenue for the quarter reached $6.27 billion (about 39.87 billion yuan), an increase of 9.3% compared with the same period last year, while operating profit was $2.27 billion (about 14.44 billion yuan), an increase of 10% year-on-year.
Among them, the console hardware and accessories part had the highest revenue, accounting for 53% of the total revenue with $3.3 billion; physical game software was $1.83 billion, accounting for 29%; digital game software revenue was $560 million, accounting for 9%; subscription + DLC + digital game part, a total of $440 million, accounting for 7%. In addition, the mobile field and IP licensing totaled $130 million, accounting for only 2%.
It is worth mentioning that the financial report pointed out that as of December 31, 2021, the global sales of Nintendo NS exceeded 103.54 million units, and the game sold 766.41 million copies. In terms of volume, it surpassed the 1016.3 million Wii and the 102 million PS1 to become Nintendo's highest-selling home console.
Specifically, the Switch sold 81.68 million units, the Switch Lite 17.87 million units, and the newly launched Switch OLED also sold 3.99 million units. By geography, 24.36 million units were sold in Japan, 40.12 million units in the Americas, 26.98 million units in Europe, and 12.09 million units in other regions.
In terms of games, Nintendo's financial report also announced its top 10 game sales. Among them, "Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Edition" sold 43.35 million copies topped the list, followed by the cumulative sales of 37.62 million copies of "Collection! Animal Friends" and the 27.4 million copies of "Nintendo Smash Bros. Brawl Special Edition". Among them, Pokémon Crystal Diamond/Brilliant Pearl, released at the end of 2021, has sold 13.97 million copies, becoming the ninth best-selling first-party game.
The gaming business performed well, and revenue broke records again
Although the specific operating profit was not announced, it is undeniable that the Microsoft Xbox business in 2021 will perform well. With a total revenue of $16.28 billion, the company has set an all-time record for its gaming business, according to publicly available data.
Specifically, Xbox's gaming revenue as a whole showed an upward trend, with content and services revenue increasing by 8.8% to US$12.6 billion (about 80.13 billion yuan), while the division's hardware revenue was US$3.7 billion (about 23.53 billion yuan), up 63.3% year-on-year.
It is worth mentioning that according to Daniel Ahmad's previous estimates, as of January 2022, the cumulative shipment of Xbox Series X/S consoles has exceeded 12 million units. Although there is no shortage of supply chain impacts, compared with Sony's PS5 sales, it can still be said to be pitifully small.
On the other hand, the total number of users of Microsoft's game subscription services Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass has already exceeded 25 million, an increase of 7 million compared to the same period in 2021.
But GameLook has previously reported that according to Microsoft's fiscal second quarter of 2022 (Q4 2021), the revenue of Xbox content and services in that quarter increased by only 10% compared with the growth of subscribers. In this regard, Microsoft explained that in the quarter on Xbox and XGP, most of the strong performance is Microsoft's first-party games, and third-party games are relatively weak, affecting users' payment attitudes.
Indeed, according to official figures, Halo: Infinity surpassed 20 million players and Forza Horizon 5 surpassed 18 million. Among them, "Halo: Infinity" set a record for the largest debut of the "Halo" series. Much of that relies on Microsoft's growing lineup of first-party studios.
Microsoft now has 23 first-party studios, including Bethesda's parent company ZeniMax. When the successful acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Demonware, Digital Legends, High Moon Studios, Major League Gaming and many other well-known studios joined, this number will be significantly improved.
In other words, Microsoft, which has multiple popular IPs and strong self-research capabilities, will inevitably continue to greatly increase the total number of subscription users. Compared with the pursuit of hardware shipments, the company will be more inclined to use XGP to open up Xbox and PC, create a seamless gaming experience, and achieve another breakthrough in the game business.
In fact, in addition to the game, Microsoft's other businesses are also stable. For example, Microsoft's smart cloud business generated revenue of $18.3 billion in fiscal second quarter, up 26 percent year-over-year. Among them, the core of the intelligent cloud business, Azure cloud platform and other cloud services in the second quarter revenue increased by 46% year-on-year.
Traditional businesses such as the Office series also achieved revenue of $15.94 billion, up 19 percent, higher than analysts had previously predicted $15.86 billion. At the same time, Microsoft also said at the earnings conference that the number of devices running Windows 10 or 11 in the second fiscal quarter currently exceeds 1.4 billion, and the Windows 11 users using Windows apps are already three times the number of Windows 10 users.
The overall business is outstanding, but the first-party game is lagging behind
Of course, Sony, the highest-paid of the "Royal Three", also announced the data on game hardware in the Q3 financial report. According to its financial report for the third quarter of fiscal 2021 (October-December), as of December 31, 2021, the total global shipments of PS5 reached 17.2 million units, and the total global shipments of PS4 reached 116.8 million units. Among them, PS PLUS users reached 48 million.
It is worth mentioning that although it is affected by the global chip shortage, Sony's gaming hardware is also continuing to grow, selling 3.9 million PS5 and 200,000 PS4s in the third quarter alone. Nintendo, by contrast, sold 10.67 million Switch units during the quarter.
In terms of specific game sales, PS5 games and PS4 games sold a total of 92.7 million copies. Among them, first-party games sold 11.3 million copies, accounting for only 12.2%, while digital games accounted for 62% of total sales.
Obviously, judging from the low proportion of first-party game sales in Q3, it is not difficult to understand the reasons for the high revenue and low profit performance of Sony's game business. Obviously, continuing to improve the lineup of first-party games will be the direction of Sony's future efforts.
After all, after the acquisition of 5 game studios in 2021, Sony's total number of first-party studios is still only 17, which is a big gap compared to Microsoft. Because of this, Sony has also accelerated the acquisition process. On January 31, 2022, the company suddenly announced its first big purchase of the year , the $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie , which has many ties to Microsoft.
Outside of gaming, Sony's other five businesses are equally strong, even raising their full-year operating profit forecast to 1.2 trillion yen (about 65.89 billion yuan) in their earnings reports. According to the Q3 financial report, the company's sales reached 3,031.3 billion yen (about 166.45 billion yuan) and operating profit was 465.2 billion yen (about 25.7 billion yuan) during the quarter, up 15%.
Among them, in addition to the game business contributed 92.9 billion yen in operating profits, Sony's film and television business also saw a sharp increase in revenue, mainly due to the box office hits of the two new series of "Spider-Man" and "Venom", with profits as high as 149.4 billion. In addition, the operating profit of the music business was 55.1 billion yen, the electronics and solutions business was 80 billion yen, the imaging and sensing solutions business was 64.7 billion yen, and the financial services business was 35.2 billion yen.
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