Sony posted their Q2 earnings report for the fiscal year 2022 and it shows that their gaming division with PlayStation has suffered a rather dramatic drop in operating income.

This massive drop is about roughly 59%, when converted to USD. Such a massive dropoff comes due to the Japanese yen weakening, but also with one other major factor.

The other factor with revenue dropping is that PlayStation posted its worst microtransactions revenue since 2019.

Compared (via TweakTown) to last year at this point, revenue through add-on content, which includes microtransactions, DLCs, and expansions, has declined drastically by over 20% or $347 million.

It should be noted that 2021 was their record high, but 2022 Q2 is roughly similar to their values from 2019 Q2, right before the COVID pandemic which led to an explosion in revenue for the company.

This drastic drop in revenue through add-on content may also be explained by their major drop in PlayStation Plus subscribers, where nearly 2 million users cancelled their subs, shortly after it’s relaunch back in June. This may have an impact on their monthly average users also being a low since 2019.

Less active players means less players buying microtransactions, most of which come from titles such as Call of Duty, Genshin Impact, and Fortnite, for Sony.

This could be a concern if the former ends up being taken away after Activision Blizzard gets officially bought by Microsoft, but fortunately for Microsoft, Phil Spencer has gone on record saying it will stay with the platform as long as it exists.

Thankfully for Sony it’s not all doom & gloom, since they aren’t only a gaming company. Their music division saw major increases to their operating income and they do have big hits coming up to aid in revenue, such as the upcoming God of War Ragnarök.