As part of its latest quarterly earnings report, Sony revealed that it sold 3.9 million PlayStation 5 consoles, for a total of 17.3 million. The firm had sold over 20 million PlayStation 4 consoles by this time in its history, but that console didn’t face the same component shortages.

Sony reported a net income of $346 million on revenues of $3 billion for the quarter ending December 31, 2021. $813 million of those revenues came from its Game & Network Services business unit, a drop of 70 percent year-over-year (YOY). All of Sony’s other major units grew in the quarter.

“Total gameplay time of PlayStation users in December 2021 was 20 percent lower than the same month of the previous year, which was immediately after the release of the PS5, but gameplay time increased approximately 7% from December 2019,” Sony noted. “For a quarter in which there were only a few major titles released, we think this was solid performance.”

In its report, Sony noted that it had decreased the “strategic price points for PlayStation 5 hardware, [which] were set lower than manufacturing costs,” indicating that it is again moving towards making its hardware business profitable. But a decrease in sales of first-party game titles, add-on content, peripherals, and PS4 hardware contribute to the lower results.

In the year-ago quarter, Sony sold 4.5 million PS5s, along with 1.4 million PS4s. So this quarter represents a big drop-off, YOY; the firm sold only 0.2 million PS4s in the most recent quarter, along with those 3.9 million PS5s. Looking ahead, the firm has revised its PS5 sales expectations for FY 2022 downward to 11.5 million units because of the supply chain issues.

On the services front, Sony now has 48 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, unchanged from the year-ago quarter.  Sony also noted that it has 111 million monthly active users on PlayStation, up slightly YOY.

Among Sony’s best-selling first-party titles in the quarter, only a handful—Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon’s Souls, Returnal, and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart—were available in PS5-specific versions. 9 of them were available in PS4-specific versions.

Tagged with PlayStation 5, Sony