Sony made over $2 billion from microtransactions in Holiday 2021

Sony's PlayStation platform makes more money from microtransactions than it does from full games.

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Like most modern day games companies, Sony generates far more revenues from live services, microtransactions, and DLC than it does from actual video game sales. Based on data provided by Sony and charted by us, the company has consistently delivered more revenue from add-on content than it does from physical and digital game sales combined.

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In the holiday 2021 period, Sony generated $2.18 billion from add-on content, which is typically from heavy-hitting third-party games like GTA Online (which helped GTA V make over $6.4 billion to date), Fortnite (which has made Sony $6 billion as of 2020), Apex Legends (will make $2 billion in two years), and Call of Duty Warzone (helped push 2020's COD revenues to a record $3 billion).

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Add-on content makes up over half of total game sales revenues on a quarter-by-quarter basis since FY2019. These values don't take into account other segment earnings like network services, hardware, and others--we're just comparing add-on content, digital, and physical software against one another.

While 2021's numbers are impressive they don't live up to the gargantuan records set in holiday 2020 during the PlayStation 5's launch and a boon year of pandemic spending.

Here's some data that shows just how much PlayStation makes from microtransactions and DLC versus actual game sales.