PlayStation’s best-ever cycle girds Sony for cloud-gaming battle

The PlayStation 4 is like the video-game character that can’t be defeated.

Five years after its debut, Sony’s $300 console is enjoying one of the strongest product cycles seen in the business, thanks to a steady stream of popular game titles. That’s helped the Tokyo-based company ship twice as many PS4s as Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox One, even without relying on its usual tempo of price cuts.

That puts Sony’s franchise in a strong position to counter the $34.6 billion console industry’s next challenge: games delivered via the web. After years of predictions that cloud-based gaming would make hardware — machines and games on discs — obsolete, the technology finally appears close to being ready. Google’s Project Stream this month began letting U.S. users play the latest version of Assassin’s Creed on a Chrome browser from any computer. Amazon.com Inc., which bought gameplay-streaming website Twitch and has the No. 1 cloud-computing service, is in a prime position to push into cloud gaming.

“Within PlayStation’s history, this will be the most robust holiday quarter ever,” said Masaru Sugiyama, an analyst at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “Until now Microsoft was the only rival, but with Google and Amazon moving in, it’s going to become tougher to stand apart.”

Microsoft isn’t sitting still, either. From next year, the software maker’s Project xCloudwill use the company’s global cloud network Azure to stream and play high-end games, on “any device.” Early impressions of Google’s Project Stream have been favorable, with users saying that the experience comes close to playing on a console or personal computer — without the need to actually own one.

For now, Sony’s dominance in consoles — 84 million PS4s versus 39 million for Xbox One — is paying off. Analysts estimate the company is on-track to post operating profit of 790 billion yen ($7 billion) in the current fiscal year. Last month’s PS4 exclusive title Spider-Man, which set company sales records, will provide the largest contribution to profit growth when Chief Executive Officer Ken Yoshida reports quarterly results on Oct. 30, analysts say.

For the upcoming holiday quarter, the PlayStation 4 boasts its strongest video-game lineup in years. The PS4’s dominance over Xbox One means most gamers will buy and play blockbuster titles such as Red Dead Redemption 2 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 on Sony’s console. Even its virtual-reality business is getting a boost from this month’s critically-acclaimed Astro Bot.

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