Sony shared the report for the fiscal year (ended March 31). He became the best in the history of the company’s gaming direction. Revenue exceeded $24 billion, PlayStation 5 shipments approached 8 million, and the total number of games sold for the year was almost 400 million copies.The revenue of the entire company for the year amounted to $8.9 trillion ($81.7 billion), and operating profit — ¥971.9 billion ($8.9 billion).

Sony continues to actively develop ideas that, in theory, can facilitate the passage of even the most complex and demanding games. The corresponding patents of the company speak about the movement in this direction. Among them is an expert assistance system, difficulty adjustment based on machine learning, as well as an AI assistant for passing certain sections of the game.Demon’s Souls (2020)

Epic Games has attracted additional investments in the amount of $ 1 billion. This, among other things, made it possible to strengthen cooperation with Sony, which this time invested an additional $ 200 million in the company. Epic Games’ total valuation was $28.7 billion.Epic Games announced the closing of the investment round today on its official website.

In this generation, Sony finally made a bet on exclusive AAA games, almost completely abandoning the support of inexpensive titles from less experienced studios. Despite the commercial prospects of such a strategy, it harms small ambitious teams. Among the main problems are staff turnover and studio closures.Jason Schreier writes about this in his article.

In the wake of the record-breaking launch of the PlayStation 5, Sony has decided to increase the amount of annual bonuses for its Japanese employees. This time they will be able to count on a bonus equal to the salary for seven months.This was reported by GameRant with reference to the Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Sony has published a small guide for indie developers on pitching games. The company told what you should pay attention to when applying, and also clarified which questions should be answered before presenting your project for PlayStation.Journey

After a series of failures at Google and EA, well-known producer and developer Jade Raymond announced the creation of an independent Haven studio. She will develop a new IP. Sony will finance the project.Jade Raymond told about this in the PlayStation blog.

Sony‘s gaming division has announced that it is disbanding most of Japan Studio. The company did not disclose its motives, but the media claim that the whole point is that the studio has stopped making a lot of money and releasing world hits.

Yesterday it became known that Days Gone will be the next PlayStation exclusive to appear on PC. Obviously, Sony wants to expand its audience in this way. However, there were other factors that influenced the company’s decision to port its games to another platform.This was stated in an interview with GQ by Jim Ryan, head of Sony Interactive Entertainment.

Sony now owns a small stake in the studio From Software, known for the Dark Souls series. This happened as a result of the creation of an alliance with the developer’s parent company.This became known from the quarterly report of Kadokawa Corporation Holding, which has owned From Software since 2014.

Sony has shared the results of the third fiscal quarter (ended December 31). During the reporting period, the revenue of the company’s gaming division exceeded $8 billion, and PlayStation 5 sales amounted to 4.5 million copies.Key data

The launch of the PlayStation 5 in Japan turned out to be a record low, and local players were dissatisfied with the company’s increased attention to the western market. However, Platinum Games studio is confident that Sony’s new strategy will not affect the attitude of Japanese developers to the platform in any way.Atsushi Inaba, the head of Platinum Games, spoke about this in an interview with Video Games Chronicle.

Sony continues to selectively abandon the exclusivity of some of its titles. The MLB baseball simulator The Show 21, which was previously released only on PlayStation, will also appear on Xbox for the first time. This is hinted at, among other things, by the cover of the game merged into the network.The covers of the PlayStation 5 and Xbox One versions of the game were shared by a well-known insider Anerdydad.

PlayStation is probably planning to actively develop the mobile direction and develop new games for it. This is also hinted at by the new vacancy of the European division of the company.Uncharted: Fortune Hunter

Sony‘s ranks may soon be replenished by Bluepoint Games, a studio that recently released a remake of Demon’s Souls. According to rumors, the Japanese company is already negotiating a purchase. The network also suggests that upon completion of the deal, the developers will be engaged in remakes of Metal Gear Solid exclusively for PS5.

Sony announced that the launch of PlayStation 5 sales turned out to be the most successful — both in the history of the brand itself and the entire console industry.

PlayStation suffered heavy losses in the Japanese market. For the whole of 2020, less than a million Sony consoles were sold in the country. The last time this happened was in 1994 — during the launch of the PS1.

Tonight Sony decided to temporarily remove Cyberpunk 2077 from the PS Store and return the money to those who have already bought the game. When exactly the CD Projekt RED project will appear again in the store is unknown.

Shares of Sony and Nintendo began to grow rapidly and reached record levels for more than 10 years. Experts attribute the increased interest of investors to the second wave of coronavirus and the upcoming holidays.According to Bloomberg, today Nintendo shares on the Tokyo Stock Exchange rose by 6.6% and reached a value of 67,850 ($658) for each paper.