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sony's unexpected move has attracted outside attention!

recently, sony interactive entertainment, a gaming subsidiary of sony group, suddenly announced that the price of playstation 5 (ps5) game consoles in japan will increase by 19% to 79,980 yen (equivalent to about 3,943 yuan) from september 2. as for the reason for the price increase, sony interactive entertainment explained that it was "affected by changes in the world economic situation, such as rising component prices, manufacturing and logistics costs."

recently, with the popularity of black myth: wukong, playstation 5 has also received an unexpected boost in the chinese market, and online and offline channels are facing shortages and out-of-stock situations. however, there is currently no price increase notice for playstation 5 in the chinese market.

the unexpected price increase boosted sony's stock price. during trading on wednesday, sony's stock price once rose by nearly 3% in the japanese market. as of the close of the day, sony's stock price rose by 2.29%, with a market value of 17.60 trillion yen, equivalent to about 867.6 billion yuan.

announcement of price increase

on august 27, local time, sony interactive entertainment announced that it would increase the price of the ps5 home game console in japan starting september 2. the price of the console model that can play game discs will be raised to 79,980 yen (about rmb 3,943), a 19% increase from the current price.

in addition, the price of various playstation accessories will also increase. among them, the wireless controller will increase from 9,480 yen to 11,480 yen, and the virtual reality glasses "playstationvr2" will increase from 74,980 yen to 89,980 yen. as of the end of june, ps5 has sold a total of 61.7 million units worldwide.

sony interactive entertainment explained the reason for the price increase as "affected by changes in the world economic situation, such as rising component prices, manufacturing and logistics costs". the company said: "raising prices is a difficult business decision", and on this basis, it claims that "by adjusting prices, we can stably deliver products to domestic customers." it is worth mentioning that in early august, microsoft also announced the price increase of the japanese version of the xbox series x|s console, and its reasons are similar to sony's.

according to nikkei chinese, the rising prices of components such as semiconductors and memory are considered the main reason for sony's price increase. sony group president hiroki totoki pointed out at the earnings conference in february that "ps5 is different from previous models and it is difficult to reduce costs, which is a problem." he also said that "even with the rising costs of chips and memory, we will still launch product planning that is within reach of users."

this is the third time that the playstation console has increased its price in japan. the price was 54,978 yen when it was first released in november 2020, and it was raised to 60,478 yen in september 2022, and then to 66,980 yen in november 2023. the price after this price increase is about 25,000 yen higher than when it was first released. the previous generation game console, the ps4, did not increase its price after it was released in japan.

unexpected

before the launch of "black myth: wukong", the sales data of ps5 was not very good. in the first quarter of fiscal year 2024 ending june 30, ps5 sales fell 27.3% year-on-year to 2.4 million units. sony also stated in may that it expects to sell 18 million ps5s this fiscal year, down from 20.8 million units last year.

sony is widely expected to launch a more powerful mid-term update of its gaming console in the coming months, but the fact that it is raising the price of its current model is a surprise given the upcoming update.

however, andrew jackson, head of japanese equity strategy at ortus advisors, said, "the price increase will at least encourage a wave of pre-price increase buying in this quarter, which is a small positive for sony's stock price." sony's stock price rose nearly 3% during trading on wednesday.

recently, the launch and popularity of black myth: wukong has boosted ps5 sales in china and even the global market. since black myth: wukong has high requirements for pc device configuration, many players with limited budgets choose to buy ps5 to experience the game.

black myth: wukong is a record-breaking new game that can be played on both pcs and sony game consoles. its release and sony's promotional activities have caused sony ps5 to face shortages and out-of-stock situations in the chinese market. as of august 28, jd.com and tmall flagship stores showed that ps5 was in the "off-shelf" and "out-of-stock" status. in the tmall flagship store, the ps5 optical drive version has sold more than 20,000 units. customer service said that the ps5 console set has been sold out and removed from the shelves. please pay attention to the subsequent listing.

according to official news from game science, three days after its release, as of 21:00 on august 23, the sales of china's first 3a masterpiece "black myth: wukong" across all platforms has exceeded 10 million copies, and the maximum number of concurrent online users across all platforms has reached 3 million. this data not only greatly broke the sales record of domestic games, but also made "black myth: wukong" one of the fastest console games to reach 10 million sales in history. according to data from foreign data analysis company vg insights, the total sales of "black myth: wukong" has reached 15.4 million copies, and the total revenue of the game has exceeded us$730 million (approximately rmb 5.1 billion).

it is understood that the chinese game market is dominated by mobile games, and in the global game market, console games and pc game revenue account for 50%, and overseas players prefer to play stand-alone games. in terms of stand-alone game distribution, the console side is mainly bound to hardware such as sony playstation and microsoft xbox, while the pc side relies more on steam.

tianfeng securities pointed out that since black myth: wukong has high requirements for hardware configuration, old models cannot provide high-quality gaming experience, and players have a strong demand for replacement. it is expected that phenomenal game products will accelerate pc replacement, and the subsequent launch of new ai pcs is expected to further accelerate user replacement, and the industry chain opportunities are worth paying attention to.

shanxi securities said that the popularity of "black myth: wukong" will bring about broadband upgrades and pc replacement needs. as a well-made 3a game, its configuration requirements are relatively high, mainly reflected in the three aspects of picture, storage, and network. in terms of picture, the default minimum configuration of the game is gtx 1060. the best experience under panoramic ray tracing requires rtx 4080 super. combined with the leading ai demand, it is expected to bring a significant wave of replacement of independent graphics card pc desktop hosts and gaming laptops. in terms of storage, the game requires a 130gb hard drive configuration. with the continuous emergence of large-capacity applications such as 3a games, 4k/8k videos, and large models on the end, the bit demand for end-side storage capacity will increase significantly. in terms of network, both game downloads and cloud gaming methods have high requirements. for a 130gb game size, it will take at least 2.9 hours to use 100m broadband, and gigabit broadband can shorten the waiting time by up to 10 times. for cloud gaming, according to the “overall technical requirements for cloud gaming”, 4k 60fps downlink bandwidth requires at least 50mbps, and 5g networks will shorten the experience delay from 20-30ms to 10ms.

editor: wang lulu

proofreading: yang lilin

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