You're still thinking short term though. Sony doesn't need to be competitive with Nintendo in the family market right away. They can wait until 2026 to drop the price of the PS5 digital to 300-350 dollars. Building that family friendly catalog BEFORE then will pay dividends. Especially if you do something and release an Astrobot movie and do transmedia marketing for the game that is already on the market. So you build the library now and sell those games down the line.
PS Portal also an option to push for kids. Metrics probably show that kids mostly play the Switch at home anyways. Once they update it to support cloud gaming, you won't even need to buy a PS5. Just subscribe to PS+ and play via cloud. Nishino did mention that cloud could come to Portal, but I'm confused on what the hold up is.
I did bring up PS Portal as a lower-priced entry point once they do cloud gaming for it. The reason it's probably taking so long is because they'd need to increase the number of deployed servers globally to facilitate demand for Portals accessing via cloud (vs Remote Play) and doing so at PS5 quality settings. SIE's cloud network probably only has enough systems deployed to handle cloud streaming for current PS5 console owners, which would cover current and some future PS+ Premium subscribers for cloud gaming.
PS Portal stock is fine. The demand isn't nearly that high, though as I said cloud might change that. It also gives us an idea of how much a PS Portable might cost. We're looking at probably 450-500 which probably isn't family friendly from day 1.
I think you're underestimating demand for PS Portal because it'd seem in several markets supply wasn't enough when it could've clearly sold more. As for its showing where a PS handheld would fall at pricing-wise, well keep in mind the Portal probably has a higher profit margin on it than a PS handheld would have from Day 1; a PS handheld wouldn't need as high a profit margin because it'd have a larger volume of units to sale to make up that difference.
A PS handheld selling for $449 or $499, IMHO that'd basically have to be something capable of natively playing base PS5 games on the go, at base PS5 settings or slightly scaled down using AI-based tech like PSSR. Or something that can play PS6 games at lowered settings through same use of technologies, where developers don't have to do much of the work themselves if any.
A handheld coming out 2026 or later that can only play PS4 games natively isn't going to cut the mustard at a $449 or $499 price point.
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FY2024 Forecast (year-on-year)
Operating Income
Decrease in hardware losses due to lower unit sales
That doesn't necessarily mean they're losing money on PS5s, though. It just means they're making less money per PS5 than they were making at some point earlier, due to changes like component pricing increases.
Also I don't know how else to interpret decreases in losses due to lower unit sales other than that meaning less losses due to manufacturing less units. Which is something they have said was going to be the case anyhow.
Otherwise if they made the same number of units this FY as last FY but sold less than last FY, assuming component pricing and inflation don't massively subside, that'd increase their losses substantially.
Given they (SIE) just went through phasing out older PS5s for the new revision (with the detachable disc drive) late last year, which was done to help save costs, they are very likely profitable selling PS5s thanks to the streamlining of their production pipeline alone. They don't need to make two distinct PS5 models anymore; just one and then for the Disc SKU, throw the disc drive in there pre-installed. Simple.
However I'm certainly willing to believe that due to market conditions and whatnot, absolute profit margins for PS5s may not be as high as they were in back half of FY '22 or first half of FY '23.
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