Sony announced its financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, related to the period between October and December, together with the traditional update on PS5 shipments.
According to the financial documents provided by the company, 9.5 million PS5 units were sold in to retailers during the quarter, which means that the grand total for shipments of the console is at 75 million units by December 31, 2024.
The holiday numbers of units shipped are the second-best ever for SIE, and for the sake of comparison, the Nintendo Switch has shipped 4.82 million units during the holiday quarter.
We also get an update on PlayStation software units sold during the quarter, and it’s 95.9 million copies during the quarter, of which 11.6 million units were first-party games. The digital download ratio was 74%.
Net sales for the Game & Network Services business, which includes PlayStation and PlayStation Network, were 237.9 billion yen, significantly up (16%) year-on-year.
This was due to an increase in PS5 unit sales and in sales of third-party games and DLC.
Operating income was 31.9 billion yen, significantly up (37%) year-on-year (achieving an overall record for Q3) due to growth in sales for network services and third-party games. PlayStation is also selling hardware at less of a loss. This was partly offset by a decline in sales for first-party games.
The forecast for the full fiscal year has been increased by 3% for sales and by a whopping 7% for profits due to PlayStation Network sales above expectations.
PlayStation Network monthly active users during the quarter were 129 million (this is the highest number in PlayStation history). Significantly up year-on-year (from 118 million) and quarter-on-quarter (from 116 million). It’s worth reminding that Sony has not provided numbers for PlayStation Plus subscribers for a long time.
Looking at Sony as a whole company, both Sales and operating income were up year-on-year, as you can see below.
If you’d like to compare with historical data, you can check out Sony’s financial results from the previous quarter, announced in November. On the other hand, if you care more about games, Sony just hosted a State of Play broadcast featuring many titles coming to its (and other) platforms.
Other gaming companies have also already announced their financial results this quarter, including Square Enix, Take-Two, Sega, Bandai Namco, Electronic Arts, Nintendo, Marvelous Entertainment, Koei Tecmo, Capcom, Microsoft, and Konami.
Note: the article initially mentioned 75 million units for PS5. It has now been corrected to 74.9 as of December 2024 according to Sony’s own presentation slides showcased during the quarterly conference call. This is normal, as quarterly numbers are approximated in Sony’s own documents to the first decimal, so adding them up can lead to a small margin of error. Of course, by now the number should be well over 75 million.