'We Are Moving Away From a Hardware Centric Business'

by
William D’Angelo
, posted 1 day ago / 7,903 Views

Sony Senior Vice President Sadahiko Hayakawa in a Q&A session with investors stated PlayStation is moving away from being a “hardware centric business” to more of a platform that focuses on community and increasing engagement.

“In the gaming business, we are moving away from a hardware centric business model more to a platform business that expands the community and increases engagement,” said Hayakawa.

Sony in its latest earnings report announced it shipped 2.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles for the quarter ending June 30, 2025 for a lifetime shipment figure of 80.3 million units.

The PlayStation 5 is currently 2.1 million units behind the PlayStation 4 in terms of units shipped. The PS4 through the same amount of time shipped 82.4 million units.

Sony CFO Lin Tao at the same Q&A session did admit PlayStation’s live service plans have not gone smoothly, but states progress is being made.

“For Q1 the live service ratio was about 40%, for the full year it’s a little less, probably between 20-30%,” she stated. “So in terms of the transformation, it’s not entirely going smoothly, but from a longer-term perspective, if you look at the changes over five years you see that there’s definitely been a change.

“Of course, we recognise that there are still many issues, so we should learn the lessons from mistakes and make sure that we introduce live service content where there’s less waste and it’s more smooth.”

A life-long and avid gamer, William D’Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.