Sony estimates its PC games sales will quadruple by 2023

PC games are serious business: Sony is bullish on PC game sales, revealing in its latest financial forecast that it expects to earn $300 million from them in the next fiscal year, a 375% YoY jump, which could explain the aggressive acquisition and consolidation trend in the gaming segment.

• Sony is bringing various PlayStation exclusives to the PC in the next nine months. This would open a new market of gamers who already have the hardware needed to purchase and play the games.
• This means Sony no longer has to rely on PlayStation 5 console sales to move the needle on games. Supply chain issues and the chip shortage have stifled PS5 sales for more than a year and a half.
• Sony expects PS5 shortages to ease by 2024, per PC Gamer. Instead of wrestling with supply chain shortages it can’t control, porting dozens of game titles to PC could be a surefire way to generate new and recurring revenues.

How we got here: Game developers and console and PC platform owners have been acquiring assets in anticipation of heightened gaming competition.

• This year kicked off with aggressive gaming acquisitions. Take-Two Interactive bought Zynga for $13 billion, merging two monoliths in PC and mobile gaming segments. 
• Days later, Microsoft reported it would acquire Activision Blizzard for $70 billion, the biggest M&A in gaming history and Microsoft’s second-largest acquisition behind the $26 billion LinkedIn purchase in 2016.
• Sony followed suit by buying Halo and Destiny developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. Bungie has well-established PC-gaming roots.
• Electronic Arts (EA) is reportedly in talks with NBCUniversal, Disney, and Apple for a potential acqui-hire.

Replay value: Worldwide consumer spending on games is expected to set new records this year, with the market hitting $222 billion per, Data.ai and IDC. 

• Sony earned $115 million in revenues in 2021 from three PS4 exclusives ported into Windows, namely Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, and God of War (2014).
• By porting various games in its library for Windows and PC gamers, Sony can access a market of users who were unlikely to buy a PlayStation console.
• Sony’s strategy points the way for other gaming monoliths to unlock their content libraries and newly acquired intellectual property for other gaming markets.