On May 10, Sony announced its fiscal 2021 (April 2021 to March 2022) financial report. According to the data, Sony's total revenue in this fiscal year reached 9,921.5 billion yen (about 551.949 billion yuan), an increase of 10% year-on-year; the full-year operating profit was 1,202.3 billion yen (about 62.039 billion yuan), an increase of 18% year-on-year.
Sony said that the company achieved both sales and profit growth in the five major businesses of electronics, film and television, music, games and semiconductors this fiscal year. Thanks to the growth of cinema box office revenue, digital streaming revenue of new films and film licensing revenue, the turnover of the film and television business soared by 65%. The growth of high-end TV and digital camera categories also drove sales of electronics businesses by 13% and profits by 66%.
In the gaming business, sales of game hardware increased, but sales of non-first-party game content declined. At the same time, the global shipment of PS5 also reached 19.3 million units, and the shipment of PS4 reached 117.2 million units. In the past fourth quarter, sales of the two products were 2 million units and 100,000 units, respectively. In contrast, PS5 shipments in the second and third quarters of fiscal 2021 were 3.3 million units and 3.9 million units, respectively, and the fourth quarter fell sharply by 1.9 million units sequentially.
Sony officially released the next-generation game console PS5 in November 2020, and once it was listed, it sold well, becoming the most popular game console in the history of the United States, and the sales growth rate exceeded that of the PS4. However, the global lack of cores in 2021 has severely limited the production capacity of the PS5, and Sony officials have also responded that this shortage will last for a whole year. Affected by this, the shipment volume of PS5 is constantly decreasing, and it is in a serious situation of short supply.
In May last year, the PS5 national bank version was released, but the product was sold out in less than 1 minute, and the subsequent sales were quickly robbed, and many people still can't buy the PS5. On the second-hand trading platform, the price of PS5 has remained high, and some of it is even more expensive than the original price, which shows how scarce the product is.
However, this situation may soon be broken, with the continuous price reduction of graphics cards, the new generation of processor products on the market, players who did not buy PS5 may move to the PC platform. At the same time, the impact of global core shortage has gradually passed, and the production capacity of PS5 has continued to rise, and it should be much easier to buy in the future. However, graphics cards can be bought at the original price, how many people are willing to buy PS5?