It’s been three decades since the Sony PlayStation first brought to life some of the video game industry’s most beloved franchises.
Sony Interactive Entertainment president and CEO Jim Ryan is set to retire in March 2024. His tenure began in 1994, the same year the PlayStation launched in Japan. The gaming console expanded into the U.S. a year later in 1995.
“Before the launch, there was considerable uncertainty. We were moving into a space that had two pretty entrenched occupants, Nintendo and Sega,” Ryan said.
Shawn Layden, the former chairman of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, credits the early success of the PlayStation to a joint venture between Sony Music and Sony Electronics.
“I think from the beginning, the company knew just being a tech company wasn’t enough. You had to bring some secret sauce in from the entertainment world,” Layden said.
The PlayStation 2 was released in 2000 and is still the best-selling video game console of all time with over 155 million consoles sold, according to company financial statements.
“We went into markets where video gaming had never really been a thing. So in southern Europe, for example, Italy and Spain and places like the Middle East, we established a gaming culture where none had existed,” said Ryan.
But the PlayStation’s 30-year history did not come without speed bumps and the future remains uncertain. Most recently, Microsoft’s $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition presented a major threat to Sony’s long-standing gaming business.
“The big controversy is obviously that Activision is a big producer of games. And the concern was that with Microsoft acquiring them, they would own pretty much what is left of independent big studios and not share the games over with PlayStation,” said Creative Strategies President Carolina Milanesi.
The Japanese gaming giant cut its sales forecast for PlayStation 5, its most recent console released in 2020, on Feb. 14 when it warned of lower demand. Sony laid off 900 workers, or 8% of its PlayStation division on Feb. 27.
Watch the video to learn more about the story of Sony’s PlayStation and to hear what is next for the company.
TAIPEI, TAIWAN – 2021/07/19: A foodpanda delivery man wearing a face mask rides past a Taiwanese flag ahead of the COVID-19 alert Level 3 restriction lift in Taipei. (Photo by Walid Berrazeg/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Uber Technologies will acquire the Taiwan business of Delivery Hero-owned Foodpanda for $950 million in cash, as Foodpanda focuses on other markets.
The deal, subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close in the first half of 2025, the firms said in a joint statement on Monday.
In a separate agreement, Delivery Hero will sell $300 million in newly issued ordinary shares to Uber.
“We need to focus our resources on other parts of our global footprint, where we feel we can have the largest impact for customers, vendors and riders,” said Niklas Östberg, co-founder and CEO of Delivery Hero.
Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, senior vice president of delivery at Uber, said the Taiwan market is “fiercely competitive” and the acquisition would help them grow in the market “where online food delivery platforms today still represent just a small part of the food delivery landscape.”
Foodpanda is one of the largest online food and grocery delivery platforms in Asia with a presence in markets including Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, The Philippines and Hong Kong. In 2016, Germany’s Delivery Hero acquired the company.
Taiwan’s food delivery market is dominated by Foodpanda and Uber Eats. Data from insights platform Measurable AI up till August revealed that Foodpanda had a 52% market share by order volume in Taiwan, while Uber Eats held the remaining 48% share.
The deal would be one of the largest international acquisitions in Taiwan, not including those in the semiconductor chip industry, according to the joint statement.
Delivery Hero said in February it had ended talks to sell its Foodpanda business in selected Southeast Asian markets. Östberg told CNBC the same month that the firm was “happy” to hold on to its Foodpanda business in Southeast Asia “forever.”
– CNBC’s Ryan Browne and Dylan Butts contributed to this report.
Tencent has faced a number of headwinds in 2022 including a Covid-induced slowdown in the Chinese economy and a tougher market for gaming.
Bobby Yip | Reuters
Tencent beat analyst estimates for revenue and profit in the first quarter, thanks to slightly better sales in the Chinese tech giants core gaming business and improved profitability at its advertising and business services division.
Here’s how Tencent did in the March quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:
Revenue: 159.5 billion Chinese yuan ($22 billion) versus 158.4 billion yuan expected.
Profit attributable to equity holders of the company: 41.9 billion yuan versus 36.64 billion yuan anticipated.
Tencent’s adjusted net profit was up 62% year-on-year, marking the fastest growth since the March quarter of 2021, according to LSEG data. Revenue jumped 6% year-on-year.
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Sony said sales of its flagship PlayStation 5 console totalled 20.8 million in the fiscal year 2023 slightly lower than an already revised-down 21 million unit target.
Nikos Pekiaridis | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Sony on Tuesday reported a 7% drop in annual profits in the fiscal year 2023, dragged down by a decline in its financial services division.
The company also narrowly missed its forecast for unit sales of its flagship PlayStation 5 gaming console for the full year.
Here’s how Sony did in the March quarter versus LSEG consensus estimates:
Revenue: 3.5 trillion yen ($22.4 billion) versus 2.89 trillion yen expected. That represents a 14% increase year-over-year — but the first drop since Sony’s 2020 September quarter, according to LSEG data.
Operating profit: 229.4 billion yen versus 236.81 billion yen expected. That marks a 57% jump year-over-year.
The Japanese gaming giant reported 2023 revenue of 13 trillion, an increase of 19% year-over-year.
Sony’s operating profit for the full year, though, came in at 1.2 trillion yen, down 7% year-over-year.
Sony narrowly missed its revised down target for PlayStation 5 sales. The firm said that sales of its flagship console totalled 20.8 million in the fiscal year 2023.
Sony expects even weaker sales of 18 million units of its PS5 in the year ending March 2025, a company executive said, according to Reuters.
It comes after Sony on Monday announced a management shakeup in its Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) gaming unit, with the division’s interim CEO Hiroki Totoki becoming chairman of the business.
Long-time Sony executives Hideaki Nishino and Hermen Hulst were appointed CEO of the Platform Business Group and Studio Business Group, respectively — two newly created divisions of SIE.
Financial unit weighs on profit
Sony said its financial services business was the primary segment driving down profit.
In 2023, operating income in the financial services unit came in at 173.6 billion yen, marking a 22.5% year-on-year drop after a firm increase in 2022.
The company also suffered from a decline in its imaging and sensing solutions (I&SS) business, which houses its imaging chips.
Sony’s I&SS business recorded operating income of 193.5 billion yen, down 9% from 2022.
Sony said it’s forecasting a drop in overall group revenue for the current fiscal year. The company expects sales will reach 12.3 trillion yen for the year ending March 2025, down 5%.
Fiscal year 2024 operating income is expected to total 1.28 trillion yen, up 5%, Sony said in its consolidated results.
