Sony has told investors that PlayStation user engagement is lower than expected at present, thanks in part to PS5 stock issues. The company had hoped that the revamped PS Plus would increase the amount of time people spend playing games on their PS4 and PS5, but with the last-gen console on its way out and the current-gen console still hard to find, the investment has yet to bear fruit.
PS5 stock situation is expected to improve
The good news is that Sony’s focusing all its efforts on increasing PS5 stock worldwide, and one of the ways it plans to address lower-than-expected user engagement is by increasing supply specifically around the time blockbuster video games are set to release. God of War Ragnarok, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, and Hogwarts Legacy are just some of the games yet to release in 2022.
Interestingly, the revamped PS Plus did end up increasing the number of subscribers by one million in the last quarter, but gameplay time decreased by 15 percent year-on-year. That said, Sony believes that last year or two saw an unusually high number of people playing games because of worldwide lockdowns stemming from Covid-19. Now that people are back at work physically and in school, they aren’t finding enough time to play games.
“We believe the primary reason for this is that the growth of the overall game market has recently decelerated as opportunities have increased for users to go outside due to a reduction in COVID-19 infections in key markets,” Sony said in its recent financial presentation. “Taking this situation into account, we intend to take action to increase user engagement in the second half of the fiscal year, during which major titles including first party software are scheduled to be released, primarily by increasing the supply of PlayStation 5 hardware and promoting the new PlayStation Plus service.”
In other news, Sony isn’t happy about the idea of Call of Duty potentially becoming Microsoft exclusive, and here’s a handy list of every PS4 and PS5 game releasing in August 2022.