Sony Report: PlayStation 5 Sales Exceed 75 Million, PSN Audience Grows to 129 Million Users

Sony reported a significant jump in sales in the third quarter of its fiscal year 2024 (ended December 31), prompting it to raise its full-year profit and revenue forecasts. The company showed positive momentum and beat expectations on all key metrics.

Image Source: Playstation.com

Sony’s revenue in the last quarter was 4.41 trillion Japanese yen ($28.61 billion), up 18% year-on-year, compared with analysts’ expectations of 3.77 trillion yen ($24.64 billion). Operating profit rose 1% year-on-year to 469.30 billion yen ($3.04 billion), compared with analysts’ expectations of 404.21 billion yen ($2.62 billion).

For the full 2024 fiscal year ending March 31, the company forecast sales of 13.2 trillion yen ($85.64 billion), up 4 percent from its November forecast, and raised its full-year operating profit forecast 2 percent to 1.34 trillion yen ($8.69 billion).

Sony’s games and network services division posted a 16% year-on-year increase in sales to 237 billion yen ($1.54 billion) in its fiscal third quarter, driven by higher sales of games and additional content for consoles and other platforms. The company sold 9.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the December quarter, up 1.3 million from the same period a year earlier. The company is on track to sell 75 million units of the latest-generation console by the end of 2024. Last year, the company released the PlayStation 5 Pro, an improved version of the original PS5 that debuted in 2020.

As of December 31, the number of monthly active users of the PlayStation Network platform was 129 million, 6 million more than in the same period a year earlier. Over the past quarter, Sony sold 95.9 units of software for PS4 and PS5, 6.2 million more than in the previous year. Of these, 11.6 million units were its own products, compared to 16.2 million a year earlier, a decrease of 4.6 million. 74% of software sales were provided by digital downloads of full versions of games, 3 percentage points less than in the same period of the previous year.