A new report reveals that PlayStation Plus has lost nearly 2 million subscribers since the service was overhauled and relaunched in June 2022.
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Report: PlayStation Plus Loses 2 Million Subscribers
According to Sony Group Corporation’s Q2 FY2022 financial results, PlayStation Plus subscribers have dropped by nearly 2 million users since the new version of the service was launched in June 2022.
The total number of subscribers reached 45.4 million for the three months that ended 30 September 2022, down from 47.3 million in the previous quarter.
Despite the drop in subscribers, Sony Group Corporation’s network services revenue actually increased by 10% and represented its best performance to date for a single quarter.
That means Sony Group Corporation’s gaming division is making more money per customer than ever before. This could potentially reflect the uptake of more expensive subscription tiers introduced by PlayStation Plus.
Asked about the drop in the earnings call, Hiroki Totoki, CFO of Sony Group Corporation, blamed the decline in third-party game sales, PS4 sales, and “more people going out”.
Totoki expects PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers to recover during Sony Group Corporation’s next quarter, partly due to the impact of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and God of War Ragnarök.
There was a decrease in the number of PlayStation Plus members. However, in the second quarter, we updated our services and there hasn’t been great momentum overall. In addition, we did not conduct any aggressive promotions during the second quarter.
In the future, we will have more penetration on PS5 and we will have very good titles. Other than that, we can do better promotion and we think we can recover.
Hiroki Totoki, CFO of Sony Group Corporation
Another investor then asked about PlayStation Plus numbers, to which Totoki replied:
More people are now going outdoors and we are not out of the negative cycle yet. Sales of PS4 along with third-party software were also rather sluggish and sales of catalog titles also declined.
Also, PS5 engagement is quite high, so in Q3 we expect a recovery. We have strong titles from first parties and we have some seasonal effects. So, in Q3 we could see some recovery from the downward trend – that’s our hope.
Hiroki Totoki, CFO of Sony Group Corporation
Sony Group Corporation also published an additional statement about the decline in PlayStation Plus subscribers. They claim that it was affected by “a greater drop in user engagement among PS4 users than expected”.
The number of PlayStation Plus subscriber accounts at the end of September decreased by 4% from the end of June to 45.4 million accounts. We see that this decline resulted from a greater drop in user engagement among PlayStation 4 (PS4) users than expected.
On the other hand, the ratio of PlayStation Plus subscribers among PlayStation 5 (PS5) users remains at a much higher level than PS4. We are working harder to accelerate PS5 hardware penetration to restore this user engagement going forward.
Sony Group Corporation
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