Sony just posted its earnings for the 2015 financial year, and they rather put poor Nintendo in the shade.
The company’s revenue was down 1.3 percent to ¥8.1 trillion (about £49.2 billion), while net profit grew 666.7 percent to ¥304.5 billion (£1.8 billion). The big difference between Sony and Nintendo was pointed out by one keen Twitter user.
Yep, so that means Sony’s PlayStation Network alone managed to generate more revenue than the entirety of Nintendo in the 2015/16 financial year. Oh dear.
In terms of operating income, or profit, PlayStation made 88.7bn yen (£538m). Nintendo made 32.8bn yen (£207m).
Of course, Sony’s PlayStation Network revenue is bolstered by the massive install base of the PlayStation 4 which is now up to a massive 40m. Sony gets some of that sweet dollar every time you buy something from PSN, naturally.
Then there’s all that lovely PlayStation Plus money – around £40 a year per subscriber, while Nintendo flaunt all their online goods for free, those fools.
It’s definitely not been a great year for Nintendo. The Wii U is currently on track to be the worst selling Nintendo home console of all time, with a mere 12.8 million units shifted. It’s also been a while since the console has had any games worth writing home about.
The Wii U’s troubles have been further compounded by the recent announcement that the open world Zelda Wii U will be ported to the NX as a launch title for Nintendo’s new console, due to launch March 2017. That basically seems to me a clear admission of the Wii U’s failure on Nintendo’s part.
By shifting Link’s first big open world adventure to the NX, they’ve all but admitted they don’t expect it’d do well at all on the Wii U alone, because no fucker owns one.
And really, the new Zelda has been in development for five years now – I imagine they actually want a decent number of people to play it when it finally comes out.
Ah well, here’s hoping Nintendo use the time between now and the NX launch to take stock and really come out swinging in 2017. Meanwhile, Sony will probably just roll around in their massive pile of money laughing.
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.