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A familiar franchise logo appears...
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The PlayStation audience is more demographically diverse than ever, Sony says.
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Standard PS5 hardware should start making a profit relatively soon.
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The PS5 is more popular with owners than the PS4 was at a similar point in its life.
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Digital Edition PS5 owners spend more on average than Standard Edition owners
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The PS4 is still going to be a big part of the PlayStation pie in the near-term.
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Free-to-play is here to stay on consoles.
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After years languishing as a streaming-focused service, PlayStation Now is thriving and seeing more use of its downloadable game options.
Last year, Sony said in a corporate report that it "will explore expanding our first-party titles to the PC platform, in order to promote further growth in our profitability." And PlayStation boss Jim Ryan told GQ in February that more games would be coming to PC "to expose those great games to a wider audience and recognize the economics of game development... also, our ease of making [games] available to non-console owners has grown. So it’s a fairly straightforward decision for us to make."
Formerly exclusive third-party PlayStation titles like Beyond: Two Souls, Detroit: Become Human, and Death Stranding have also seen PC ports in recent years. And PlayStation exclusives Final Fantasy XVI and Demon's Souls were briefly listed as "also available on PC" during a PlayStation 5 launch event last year before Sony quickly walked that back as a mistake.-
Underwater salvage is a tough job, but at least no one is shooting at you.
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Oh yeah, Sullivan is around, too.
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Hello? Is it me you're looking for?
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Not quite the action-packed Nathan Drake we're used to.
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Domestic life isn't all bad...
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Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.
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Dat lighting.
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There's little more satisfying than pulling off one of these jumping attacks.
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He's not heavy... he's my brother.
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Hand-to-hand combat is a lot less exciting than it looks, actually.
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If you like puzzles about sliding ancient stones into particular arrangements, you're in luck.
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This shot makes Nadine look much more beatific than she actually is.
Some more financially focused tidbits from the extensive presentation:
- Sony expects the Standard Edition PS5 hardware to start selling at a profit starting in June as the cost of goods continues to fall, even amid a global semiconductor shortage.
- The PS4 is still expected to represent 70 percent of all PlayStation revenue in the 2021 fiscal year, which ends in March 2022. The company also expects 70 million or more PS4s to still be "connected" by the end of that period, compared to just 20 million or so PS5s. That suggests there will still be significant support for the older console for the next nine months and more, so don't worry if you can't find a PS5 before then.
- Owners of the PS5 Digital Edition spend 8 percent more on PlayStation games on average than those that own the disc-drive-sporting Standard Edition. While Digital Edition owners spend 17 percent less on "full game" purchases on average, they spend a whopping 62 percent more on add-on content.
- PlayStation Plus had 47.6 million subscribers in the 2020 fiscal year, up from 36.4 million two years ago. And PlayStation Now had 3.2 million subscribers in the 2020 fiscal year, up from 700,000 just two years prior (when we were writing about the company's PlayStation Now problem).
- PS5 users spent 51.5 hours per month on their consoles in March 2021, on average. That's up from a 34.6 hour average time spent for PS4 owners in March 2014, when the PS4 was roughly the same age.
- Free-to-play games now represent 25 percent of all spending on the PlayStation Store, up from 5 percent just four years ago.
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