Sixty million people use PSN, and unfortunately for Sony, that makes the service rather pricey to run.
Sony Computer Entertainment Chief Executive Kaz Hirai has admitted that the PlayStation Network isn’t making Sony any money at the moment. He was confident, however, that all that would change in the next financial year.
According to Hirai, revenue from PSN added up to around ¥36 billion, or approximately $434 million, a figure he says “nearly doubled” in 2010. Hirai said that the service was growing, with 60 million registered accounts – split between the PS3 and PSP – as of November, and that he expected content revenue to significantly increase over the next two years.
PSN is expected to start making money for Sony in the 2011 financial year, although Hirai didn’t say how much money it would take to make that happen. It’s less than ¥300 billion, or $3.6 billion, however, which is how much Sony estimates the service will generate by the year 2012.
It’s not hard to imagine the fairly enormous costs involved it keeping a network that big up and running. It’s also not hard to see why Microsoft made the decision very early on to charge people for the ability to play online.
Source: 1up
