Sony has announced plans to significantly expand the audience of its online and mobile services. To do this, the Japanese company will allocate over $18 billion, which will be used for strategic investments. They plan to develop gaming services, among other things.According to Reuters, Sony will allocate 2 trillion rubles (about $18.39 billion) for these purposes within three years.
During this period, the company plans to increase the audience of its services from 160 million to 1 billion users.
Thus, Sony intends to focus on the development of entertainment content, an important component of which are games. As part of this strategy, the company wants to integrate more social functions into its gaming direction. One example is the recent investment in Discord, which will be integrated into the PlayStation Network in early 2022.
Due to the shortage of components, Sony is currently unable to fully meet the demand for the PlayStation 5, and therefore it needs to stimulate digital sales and increase the audience of subscription services. We are talking, first of all, about PlayStation Plus, whose audience has grown by 6.1 million over the past year and now stands at 47.6 million users.
Also, the allocated funds will probably go to investments in game studios and the development of new IP. This will help Sony realize its plan to sell 14.8 million PlayStation 5 during the new fiscal year (ending March 31, 2022).