Sony Has Now Sold 59.3 Million PlayStation 5 Consoles

As part of its annual earnings report, Sony revealed that it narrowly missed delivering on a PlayStation 5 sales target that was revised downward mid-year.

Sony earned a net income of $6.3 billion on revenues of $72 billion in the fiscal year ending March 31, with revenues up 10.3 percent year-over-year (YOY). The Game & Network Services business responsible for PlayStation delivered revenues of $27.3 billion in the fiscal year, a gain of 14.6 percent YOY. Game & Network Services represented 38 percent of Sony’s total revenues.

“This significant increase in sales was mainly due to an increase in sales of non-first-party titles, including add-on content, and the impact of foreign exchange rates,” Sony reported in its earnings statement. “[In the coming fiscal year,] sales are expected to decrease mainly due to an expected decrease in sales of hardware resulting from lower unit sales, partially offset by an expected increase in sales of non-first-party titles including add-on content.”

Sony sold 4.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the most recent quarter and 20.8 million units in the fiscal year, narrowly missing its revised target of 21 million units. Sony had originally promised to sell 25 million PS5s in the year, but fell short in the holiday quarter. The firm has now sold 59.3 million PS5s cumulatively, inline with sales of its predecessor, the PlayStation 4, at a similar point in its lifecycle. Sony expects PS5 sales to land at about 18 million units in the current fiscal year.

PS5 software sales increased by 7.75 percent in the fiscal year to 286.4 million units, with digital sales accounting for 70 percent of the total, up three percentage points YOY. But the coming year looks dull from a software perspective, with “no major existing franchise titles” due in the current fiscal year.

PlayStation Network (PSN) monthly active users (MAUs) were up 8.5 percent YOY to 118 million, but down 4 percent sequentially (when compared to the holiday quarter).

Sony will likely ride out the PS5 wave with a new PlayStation 5 Pro model this coming holiday season. And the firm separately announced that it will replace outgoing Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan with Hideaki Nishino becoming CEO of the Platform Business Group and Hermen Hulst assuming the CEO role in its Studio Business Group. The change takes effect June 1.