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The story
Even though Sony’s overall earnings are strong, the news around its PlayStation business has been nothing but bad — studio closures, layoffs, and the like. That contradiction sparked questions on 5ch’s Hardware/Industry (Geha) board. Commenters split over what’s driving the good earnings: some called it an ‘earnings-dressing trick’ of inflating apparent profit margins through budget cuts and layoffs, while others said it simply reflects growing revenue from gacha-style titles and live-service games. The debate heated up further over SIE’s accounting method of booking third-party sales alongside its own, with some suspecting it’s ‘cooking the numbers’ and others countering that it’s ‘completely standard accounting practice.’
What people said
keeping PlayStation alive longer
That's an earnings trick — cutting budgets and laying people off to temporarily inflate profit margins on paper
But total revenue is up too
Seriously makes no sense
That's like end-of-life care
The countdown timer's almost at zero
The 'Well, Obviously' Workout 🤸 (a nod to a kids' TV exercise skit, used sarcastically to mean 'duh')
Yeah, pretty much this
I don't mind that part exactly, but it's rough that first-party isn't doing well
Gacha regulation looks like it's coming, and I'm worried what happens then
Lately Sony's just been shuffling the numbers around within the group and quietly offloading the unprofitable parts bit by bit
Guess earnings reports are just too hard for idiots
Steadily prepping to pull out of 'Trash-tation,' and third parties fleeing one after another — that's your answer
Not just that — Totoki and the other execs have already dumped their shares
playing on PS5 is fine, but microtransactions are way cheaper on mobile — so are the people spending money on PS5 just clueless? (情弱, 'info-weak,' slang for the naive/uninformed)
There are probably countries where mobile payments are inconvenient for that
but I dunno
Half-assed Wolverine
Studio closure festival
Layoff festival
Discs scrapped
What exactly have you been watching this whole time?
Or more like an octopus starving and eating its own legs to death
Sounds more like Hachima Kikou than an official gazette (Hachima Kikou being a gaming blog known for sensationalism)
Wouldn't first-party make even more money if they made live-service games too?
and more that they're putting out numbers that just look good
It's not a lie, but it's kind of borrowed for now
since it includes third parties' sales too
The reason they can book it gross is that SIE itself is the one actually selling the PS5 software — thinking that means they're booking third parties' sales
as SIE's own revenue is just insane
They put out rosy-looking numbers but never specify exactly what those numbers represent
That's basically how Sony's earnings reports always go
How is that any different from Nintendo outsourcing its own games to subcontractors and only taking a 30% cut?
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
One reason Sony’s earnings look so good is that SIE books third-party sales on the PS Store on a gross basis. This isn’t fraud — it’s a fairly standard accounting practice — but the thread was split between those suspicious it’s ‘number magic’ and those explaining it as ‘legitimate accounting.’ Another point of debate was the shift in revenue structure: many pointed out that even as unit sales of full-price games decline, overall revenue keeps rising because gacha-style mobile titles and live-service games now make up a bigger share of the business. At the same time, developments on the ground — in-house studio closures, layoffs, and the shrinking of physical disc releases — suggest that PlayStation’s traditional strength, big first-party full-price titles, is fading. This seemingly contradictory situation, with strong earnings and a shrinking frontline happening at once, is what kicked off the thread’s central question.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry [Geha]) thread ‘Why does Sony have such good earnings while it’s nothing but bad news for PlayStation?‘.
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