Sony just released its financial results for the third quarter of the fiscal year, related to the period between October and December 2023, alongside an update on PS5 shipments.
The financial documents shared by the house of PlayStation reveal that 8.2 million PS5 units were shipped during the crucial holiday quarter, which brings the total to 54.7 million units. 89.7 million units of PS5 and PS4 games have also been sold during the quarter, of which 16.2 million were first-party games. The ratio of digital downloads was 66%
Below you can see the slide related to the Game & Network Services segment of the business, which includes PlayStation and PlayStation Network.
If you'd like to compare with Nintendo's numbers, the house of Mario and Zelda shipped 6.9 million Switch units during the same quarter.
These are sell-in figures to retailers. If you're curious about sell-through figures to customers, the latest number from Sony is 50 million PS5 units sold by December 9, 2023.
Sales for the Game & Network Services segment in the quarter were 197.9 bln yen, up 16% year-on-year, mostly due to an increase in sales of third-party games and DLC. This is the highest result ever achieved by the segment in a Q3.
Operating income was 30.1 billion year-on-year, a significant drop (26% year-on-year). This was due to increased losses from hardware units mostly due to promotions (Incidentally, if you'd like to purchase a PS5, you can do so on Amazon), a drop in sales of first-party games, which the increase of sales of third-party games couldn't offset.
Despite the drop, this is still one of the highest profit results ever for the segment, following fiscal years 2022 and 2021.
The sales forecast for the full fiscal year has been revised down to 210 billion yen (a 5% decrease) due to hardware sales being lower than the forecast. We'll likely know the new unit target for the full fiscal year later today. The profit forecast remains unchanged.
We also hear that the number of PlayStation Network monthly active users during the quarter was 123 million, sharply up from 107 million in the previous quarter and an 11 million increase year-on-year. Sony has stopped sharing the number of PlayStation Plus subscribers a few quarters ago.
Lastly, we also learn that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 has shipped 10 million copies (incidentally, you can purchase a copy of the game on Amazon) as of February 4. Franchise sales to customers including PC are now estimated at over 50 million units.
If we look at Sony Corporation as a whole, you can check the quarterly results below. Both sales and operating income significantly increased year-on-year.
To compare today's numbers with historical data, you can also check out our dedicated article illustrating the results for Q2, which Sony shared in November.
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