Sony Plans To Explore Microtransactions, Talks About Shifting From Hardware To Users And Services

At Sony Corporation’s quarterly financial conference call for investors and analysts, the company went into detail regarding what the future of the PlayStation business would be. Basically, the company has started seeing the benefits of recurring revenue through Network Services and an active user base.

Finance and Corporate Development Executive Atsuko Murakami talked about how the PlayStation Plus service will be made attractive for users and the company has been implementing measures towards achieving that goal.

Since the model now is now one that is based on direct sale to consumers, it makes sense for the company to focus on its active user base and the use of a service such as PlayStation Plus. Due to these reasons, Chief Financial Officer Kenichiro Yoshida stated that the focus is shifting from hardware towards maintaining and expanding the user base.

Yoshida-san also spoke of microtransactions in games and how the proportions of such sales are also increasing. The company expects that with John Kodera as the new CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, the company can make significant progress in the network segment.  While Sony’s games have had limited number of microtransactions so far, this may change with time under Kodera-san’s leadership.