There has been a lot of discussion within the industry on when Sony will release a successor to the PS4, to the point that misreported statements made some believe that the PS5 won’t come before three years.
Analyst Hideki Yasuda from the prestigious Osaka-based firm Ace Economic Research Institute doesn’t think so, as he mentioned in his recent report on Sony’s financial performance.
Yasuda-san mentions that at the present time Ace believes that PS5 will come at the end of 2019. That being said, Murata Manufacturing and TDK have expressed concerns about the tightening of the worldwide supply and demand chain of monolithic ceramic capacitors (MLCC), and have indicated that it could be it as a future risk for business.
Cars equipped with large numbers of MLCCs are being introduced in the market, and the arrival of 5G mobile services caused the arrival of more and more advanced smartphones. This casts doubts on whether it’s possible to produce gaming consoles with a sufficient supply in the large quantities required by a new launch.
Due to that, if there are issues in the supply of electronic components, Yasuda-san thinks that the possibility of a delay from the end of 2019 exists.
Another interesting area of Yasuda-san’s analysis is on PlayStation’s performance in the past quarter. Ace believes that the strong results weren’t just due to first-party titles, but also influenced by Epic Games’ Fortnite. According to the firm, its microtransactions have reached a scale in which they can make a contribution to the revenue of console manufacturers.
Ace Economic Research Institute is revising its full-year forecast for Sony’s Game & Network Services segment to 2.18 trillion yen in revenue and 250 billion yen in profit. The revenue forecast is slightly higher than Sony’s own announced outlook.
The firm believes that the issues faced in the past by Sony’s video game business have been resolved by now. The home console market has sparked concerns in the past due to a sharp contraction caused by the expansion of the smartphone game market. Yet, the launch of the Nintendo Switch attracted the attention of many customers to the console market, causing excitement around the world.