The Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 heralded the new generation and while it can still sometimes feel like a relatively new era, the fact is it's been almost three years already, while we're still getting used to some new standards. Such new standards include the pricing for this gen's games, which have increased. Nowdays many new games, especially triple-A ones, launch at a price of $70 or £70 minus a cent or penny, respectively.But according to some data, this $69.99 price point could be negatively impacting game unit sales. The data comes from Sony and therefore applies to the PS5's game unit sales more specifically, but it's revealing how the shift in price could be affecting consumer behaviour this gen. In a deep dive, Tweaktown observed that while Sony is generating record-breaking revenues from PS4 and PS5 console sales, and that software revenues were equally at an all-time high, actual game unit sales had dropped substantially. Pulling from data provided by Sony, the graphs show that PlayStation users spent $6.367 billion in combined digital and physical software purchases for fiscal year 2022. However, overall game unit sales dropped to 264.2 million games sold for FY22, representing a 39 million drop in unit sales from a year ago. However, Sony has not only managed to maintain revenue from software sales but is making record amounts. So what does this suggest?
As TweakTown noted, it suggests that PlayStation gamers are buying fewer games but spending more money on the games that they do buy, and that this is emblematic of the higher $70 price tag for new PlayStation 5 titles. Another data point also seemed to back this up, with Sony management confirming in a results briefing that third-party game sales had fallen in FY22, with the PlayStation Store showing a 38.6 million year-over-year reduction in sales of third-party titles from the last fiscal year.
A further boost to the suggestion is via Activision's Modern Warfare 2, which generated $1 billion in sales in ten days without managing to significantly shift total unit sales that much during its launch period on PlayStation. Modern Warfare 2 was offered only at the $70 price point. All of this suggests that while the higher price for new PS5 games is having a negative impact on overall game sales, it isn't having a depressing effect on game revenues.
It seems the gamble on higher prices for this gen appears to be paying off as Sony probably doesn't much mind that game unit sales are down while raking in more money. While gamers might be worse off out of pocket, here's hoping that those $70 games can come down in price as the generation wears on.