Sony has outlined its plans for the 2017 fiscal year, revealing a focus on PlayStation software, its VR headset and mobile games.
Back in April, the Japanese tech giant had announced a decline in earnings, but also forecasted its biggest profit jump in 20 years for FY 2018. PlayStation has continued to be one of Sony’s most profitable brands, with its PlayStation 4 console selling a record 50 million units as of last December since its release in November 2013. 78 million PS4s are projected to be sold by the end of 2017.
Sony says it plans expand PS VR’s uses outside of gaming. This follows CEO Kaz Hirai’s statement earlier this year that the company is already looking at ways of incorporating the tech into other areas of entertainment and beyond.
Improvements are planned for its PlayStation Vue media streaming service (which is only available in the U.S.), such as personalized ads and monetization and optimizing content lineup and costs.
And finally, perhaps most notably, Sony aims to develop a new audience by creating “a new mobile content opportunity in Japan/Asia region.” Sony plans to leverage its library of IPs and collection of developers alongside 3rd party teams to “build a title portfolio in a wide range of genres and develop original IP.” So far, Sony and Microsoft have not really dabbled in this market, while competitor Nintendo has had a successful rollout of a few mobile titles in the past several months.
As of now, it’s unclear when Sony would release these mobile titles or if there any possible launches overseas.
Sony also revealed some general performance figures in the slideshow. PlayStation Network has 70 million monthly active users (MAU), the online service used on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita systems. As well, there are 26.4 million paying subscribers for the PlayStation Plus membership (which is required to play games online). The price for this service was increased in September last year.
Sony will reveal more on what’s to come for PlayStation at its E3 press conference on June 12th. More information on where to watch livestreams can be found here.
Outside of PlayStation, Sony also has its flagship XZ Premium smartphone release to focus on this year. While the phone is set for release in select markets in June, there is no information on a Canadian launch at this time.
Source: Sony
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