God of War Has “Significantly Exceeded” Sony’s Expectations for the Game
Sony recently held a major financial call, and details emerged from the discussion about the company’s thoughts on the God of War sales success in recent months. The comments mostly came from Hiroki Totoki, Chief Financial Officer of Sony. Totoki stated that the latest title from Santa Monica Studios had “significantly exceeded” Sony’s expectations.
God of War Sales and Sony’s Expectations
In fact, God of War performed so well that Sony revised their yearly forecast for PS4 sales. Although some of the PlayStation’s third-party titles have also performed well, God of War’s enormous success was the primary factor for the upwards revision. Third-party sales did also exceed Sony’s expectations, but not to the same degree. In addition, Totoki mentioned that the games which Sony unveiled at E3; “are receiving strong feedback”.
God of War became the fastest-selling PlayStation exclusive of all time when it released earlier this year. Since then, the game has featured in the top 10 of most monthly retail charts in the US and UK; often, at the top of such lists. The game scored the #2 spot in the UK for July, months after its release. (And, of course, lacking any post-launch content releases to buoy its sales revenue.) It’s no surprise then that the game has contributed greatly to Sony’s recent success.
Sony’s PS4 shipments have seen a small decline, however, in Q1 of 2018. The shipment figures dropped by around 100,000 compared to last year’s Q1 figures. Totoki addressed this as well, explaining that the reason was due to multiplayer game releases in the previous quarter. The sales in that quarter due to those titles caused the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers to grow sharply. As a result, the numbers stabilized to an expected average with a decline in the following quarter. The number could well rise again due to major PlayStation releases in September through October.