Sony Failed To Reach Microsoft Market, PlayStation Plus Lost 2 Million Users

JAKARTA - Sony this time experienced a significant failure, where the relaunch of the PlayStation Plus doesn't seem to go according to plan. In their latest financial report, they lost 1.9 million subscribers between July and September this year.

The report reveals that the number of PlayStation Plus subscriptions fell after the re-launch from 47.3 million to 45.4 million. Of course, this is not what Sony expects.

CFO Sony Hiroki Totoki said there were several factors that contributed to the decline in the number of PlayStation Plus memberships.

He blamed the lack of marketing on the service. Totoki also cites that there is no right momentum for new services, as well as the more people who go out of the house because the pandemic is gradually over.

In the second quarter we updated our services and there was no overall good momentum. In addition, we didn't do any aggressive promotions during the second quarter. More people went out of the room, and we haven't come out of the negative cycle yet," Totoki said.

Sony announced the reshuffle of the PlayStation Plus service last March as a somewhat similar subscription to Microsoft Xbox Game Pass. This is a huge library feature of games.

Launching Digital Trends, Wednesday, November 2, unfortunately, the presence of the change did not show any profit for Sony, although the company says it now has the lowest number of monthly active users (MAU) for the PlayStation Network since 2020 at 102 million.

It was a steady decline from 104 million users last year and 103 million in the first quarter. Despite the drop in numbers on the digital side, Sony still has a strong performance in terms of PS5 hardware.

Where the company announced it had sold more than 25 million units and was capable of producing around 6.5 million new PS5 in the three months leading up to September 30.

In addition, Sony also highlighted that the ratio of gamers subscribing to the PlayStation Plus is significantly higher in the PS5 compared to the previous generation of PS4 consoles.

In response, Sony boss plans to accelerate the adoption of the PS5 hardware with the aim of restoring the user's engagement in the future.