Today Sony revealed its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2021. This ended on September 30, and includes an update on PS5 and PS4 shipments.
3.3 million PS5 and 0.2 million PS4 units were purchased by retailers worldwide during the quarter. This means that the grand total for PS4 as of September 30 is at 116.7 million units shipped globally. In contrast, PS5 has shipped 13.4 million units in its short lifetime.
Below we’ve included an overview of the performance form the Game & Network Services business. This of course includes both PlayStation and PlayStation Network, and has all the relevant figures including software sales and more.
It is clear that revenue increased significantly. With 27% year-on-year growth, this has in fact set a record for Sony due to higher PS5 hardware and third-party game sales. This is only partially offset by lower first-party game sales which is hardly surprising considering how few there have been.
In contrast profit decreased significantly year-on-year due to lower PS4 sales, with PS5 units selling at a loss a large contributing factor. Lower first party game sales didn’t help either of course.
This of course doesn’t mean that PlayStation operated at a loss. It still made a significant profit, just slightly less than in the equivalent quarter in 2020. This is in fact quite common when launching a new generation of consoles where prices are high and games are scarce.
Additional documentation has also revealed that the PlayStation Plus subscriber total was at 47.2 million as of September 30. Equally PlayStation Network had 104 million monthly active users. All in all, a pretty tidy quarter for SIE.
Source; Twinfinite
“Video games are great. I should know, I’ve played some.”
Olly S, July 2020