It has come to light that Sony Interactive Entertainment made nearly twice the amount of profits from publishing games and its gaming services compared to Microsoft during the 2019 financial year.
According to a document presented (via Benji-Sales) during the ongoing lawsuit between Epic Games and Apple from earlier today, Sony generated an estimated $4.1 billion in profit from its gaming business while Microsoft generated between $1.6 – $2.3 billion during the 2019 financial year.
The numbers are hence outdated for both companies and may as well be much higher for the post-pandemic financial year since digital spending and gaming spending in general surged during lockdowns brought upon by COVID-19 worldwide. That being said, the mentioned profits do not take into account losses suffered by Sony and Microsoft from hardware sales.
Document from Apple vs Epic revealing profit for Publishers off games and services
Profit
Tencent – $6.3B
Apple – $5.2B
Sony – $4.1B
Google – $3.2B
Netease – $2.4B
Nintendo – $2.3B
Microsoft – ($1.6B – $2.3B range)
Activision / Blizzard – $1.6B
EA – $1.2B
Epic – $1.08B pic.twitter.com/aXneihwgc3— Benji-Sales (@BenjiSales) May 5, 2021
As pointed out by Niko Partners’ senior analyst Daniel Ahmad earlier today, both Sony and Microsoft have been selling PlayStation and Xbox consoles at a loss with the intention of increasing reach and in turn increasing earnings through game sales and game services.
Sony for example may have profited around $4.1 billion during the 2019 calendar year from its gaming division, but also made an estimated loss of $1.7 billion on hardware according to another document presented during the trial. Sony hence actually made an estimated (reduced) profit of around $2.3 billion in 2019. Microsoft in the same vein made lower profits than its average $2.2 billion figure after accounting for hardware losses.
For example.
The same document from Microsoft estimates that Sony had a profit of $4.1bn on software and services.
But it had a loss of ~$1.7bn from hardware.
So it's overall profit was $2.3bn
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) May 5, 2021
The new PlayStation and Xbox consoles were launched in September 2020 and shortly afterwards, both Sony and Microsoft were reported to be selling PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X at a loss. The companies have always intended to make up the hardware losses through software profits.
