Sony Group President and CEO Hiroki Totoki, asked in a Wall Street Journal interview about aggressively selling the PS5, said “there’s no need to aggressively sell consoles right now.” Calling it “fortunate” that the PlayStation console is in the latter half of its lifecycle, he indicated Sony’s focus is on recurring revenue from a monthly active user (MAU) base of over 125 million, rather than pushing new hardware sales. Coming at a time when a semiconductor and memory shortage makes launching a new model difficult, 5ch took the remark as effectively a “declaration that there’ll be no production increase or price cut,” sparking debate over the timing of a PS6 launch and the emails nudging PS4 owners to upgrade.
Sony Group President and CEO Hiroki Totoki, speaking in the context of the PS5 and the memory shortage, said “there’s no need to aggressively sell consoles right now.” Having called it “fortunate” that the PlayStation console is currently in the latter half of its lifecycle, he explained that the focus is on recurring revenue from the current user base rather than aggressively pushing hardware sales.
In the Wall Street Journal interview, the question was framed around the fact that, with memory shortages affecting many companies, Sony wasn’t in a position to launch a new console the way a well-known rival was. In response, Totoki said it was “fortunate” that the PlayStation console is in the latter half of its lifecycle. He added, “That means there’s no need to aggressively sell consoles right now,” explaining that Sony is instead focusing on the recurring revenue generated by its current user base.
Totoki further stated that PlayStation has “over 125 million MAU,” and that how to monetize those users is what matters. According to Sony’s Q1 FY2026 financial materials, total PlayStation MAU as of June stood at 125 million accounts — an estimate of unique accounts that played a game or used an online service on PlayStation during the final month of the quarter, not a figure representing PS5 unit sales alone.
Source: gamestalk.net / Original article here
Sony's sending PS4 owners an email nagging them: "Sell your PS4 at a used shop and upgrade to a PS5!"
https://krsw.5ch.io/test/read.cgi/ghard/1788053738
That's basically a demand letter lol
Maybe they mean Game Pass's cloud gaming?
Switch2 (lol)
300,000/100,000,000
The power of a PlayStation-exclusive, Saros, lolololololololololol
Toukon's about the same deal, isn't it, lol
Can't beat Switch anymore, huh
A next-gen console that demands even more than Switch2 (scoff) — what's PS gonna do about that, piggy? 🐷
Switch2: "I'll pick up the slack now that PS5 got pulled off the shelves 👍"
Whatever Sony does gets a full stamp of approval.
Well, it's basically a religion
Denying Lord Sony's stance just isn't allowed by doctrine, you know
No worries, they already burned two and a half years to the chip shortage, so it's fine!
Nintendo's the one pushing recklessly and it's surrounded on all sides 😭
Even if they do release one, it'll be priced out of reach like Switch2 (lol)
Still, it's probably rough for the console industry as a whole
That's like comparing a landline to a cellphone and saying the landline wins because it has less noise
Ah, that's the console that sold worse than the PS2, isn't it?
Gonna overtake the PS2 too, huh.
Guess all you can do is watch with your finger in your mouth
A mysterious console whose install base keeps growing even though it's not being made anymore, lol — according to you.
In the end it only sold because of the DVD player function, not because it needed the specs, right?
PS fanboys have nothing else to lean on, lol
Guess that means they've settled the cancellation talks with AMD and TSMC?
They got some leeway since it's an emergency
Probably
They know it'd be self-destructive
I don't think it's that easy, though
Whatever capacity frees up will sell instantly to data centers, so maybe it's a case of "the rich don't need to fight"
But I think that just means "get lost already, no penalty fee needed" — the relationship's probably over
PS6 probably won't show up next year or the year after.
If they released it that soon, even selling at a huge loss it'd end up around ¥160,000 in Japan.
They won't release it until they can sell it in Japan for ¥99,800 tax included without the loss eating into profit.
I'm predicting around 2030.
Since Switch2's specs are what they are, PS5 could probably coast for another 5 years anyway
Amazon purchases over the past month:
PS5 Digital Edition (Japan): 5,000 units
Switch2: 4,000 units
'Trash-tation' getting crushed in the weekly sales charts, lmao (a mocking nickname for PlayStation blending "trash" and "station")
The Pro model is short in supply worldwide, so it'd definitely sell if they shipped more.
But they're not, because it'd turn into a loss
No reason to force sales during this crazy memory price surge
Third parties won't be happy about it though,
especially the free-to-play crowd that counts on a big player base
If the chip price surge hadn't happened,
this fiscal year's sales target would've been around 13-15 million units anyway,
so 100 million was probably never really a goal, just a milestone they'd pass along the way
Background and key points of this discussion
Totoki’s remark reads less like an excuse papering over sluggish PS5 sales and more like an explanation of a revenue strategy for the latter half of the console’s lifecycle. The “125 million” MAU (monthly active users) figure Sony cited is from Q1 of fiscal year 2026, and it’s easy to misread — it isn’t a count of PS5 units in homes, but an estimate of accounts across the entire PlayStation platform that played a game or used an online service that month. The thread split between reading the remark as “code for the painful reality that chip and memory price surges are blocking PS6 mass production,” and reading it as “a rational management call to shift toward monetizing the existing user base.” On the timing of a PS6 launch in particular, the discussion drifted into some thin, cost-based speculation — including guesses that it could land around 2030 — so that part is worth taking with a grain of salt.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware/Industry (Geha)) thread “[Bad News] Sony CEO: “No Need to Aggressively Sell PS5 Right Now”.”
