Sony banks on God of War Ragnarok to recover weak PS5 sales

Sony is pinning hopes on God of War Ragnarok to pull up PS5 sales this fiscal year, as the PlayStation company has yet to sell half of the 18 million consoles it has targeted to sell despite being halfway through the fiscal year.

Sony sold 3.3 million PS5s in the second quarter of the fiscal year 2022, which covers the three months leading up to September 30th, 2022. That brings PS5 units sold in FY22 up to 5.7 million — less than a third of the 18 million PS5 units sold that the PlayStation company has targeted for March 2023. It's been a challenging quarter for the latest PlayStation console and its PS Plus susbcribers, but Sony remains confident God of War Ragnarok will help make the difference in PS5 sales.

Will there be divine intervention from a God of War?

Sony hope higher PS5 availability and God of War Ragnarok will boost sales

Sony's Q2 financial performance was reported by VGC and Bloomberg, both of which note that Sony revised the expected profits for its gaming division down by 12% for this year due to low third-party games sales. In fact, over 10% of the 62.5 million games sold across PS5 and PS4 in Q2 were first-party titles (6.7 million units), which makes sense given that one of those big new releases — The Last of Us Part 1 — didn't seem to sell astoundingly well even at that.

Despite the challenging numbers, Bloomberg reports that Sony is banking on God of War Ragnarok "as a driver to bring players back" and bolster PS5 sales over the next quarter. Sony CFO Hiroki Totoki drew attention to the increased PS5 production leading up to the Ragnarok PS5 bundle push, commenting that 6.5 million PS5s had been assembled over the last quarter, which was faster than expected.

PS5 sales factoids.

Sony has set a manufacturing target of 30 million PS5 consoles over the next fiscal year, capitalising on the end of the PS5 stock shortage, and the company has even raised PS5 sales expectations over FY2023 from 18 to 23 million units sold. Sony has also not shirked away from this fiscal year's target of 18 million PS5s, which might have more to do with console sales always seeing a bigger rise in the third quarter than in any other time — the same quarter that happens to also feature God of War Ragnarok's release date.

Whether God of War Ragnarok will be capable of near-single-handedly reviving PS5 sales is anyone's guess, though it would have been more convincing if the game wasn't also coming to the assuredly-dead PS4. With news that the PS5 is the slowest-selling PlayStation console ever to hit Japan, it's been seemingly blow-after-blow for Sony's latest console.

Japan are not likely to go all-in on PS5 off the back of a cross-generational western PlayStation Studios title.

Sony will just have to keep putting its faith in the God of War and hope a strong third-party line-up of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, The Callisto Protocol, and Sonic Frontiers can fill in the blanks. Let us know in the comments what your thoughts are on all this and if you want to get caught up on God of War before Ragnarok launches, we've spelt out the God of War series order to help you get started.

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Written by Lee Brady

Staff Writer Lee loves to write about classic PS1 games on PS Plus and examining the game design of upcoming PS5 games like Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Final Fantasy XVI. He's a big proponent of video games as an evolving artistic medium, though his love of Sonic games somewhat undermines the purity of his intentions.