Sony Has Sold 19.3 Million PlayStation 5 Consoles
- Paul Thurrott
- May 10, 2022
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As part of its quarterly earnings report, Sony announced that it sold just 2 million PlayStation 5 consoles in the most recent quarter. It has now sold 19.3 million units overall, below the 22.4 million that PlayStation 4 had sold by this point.
Sony recorded a net income of $6.8 billion on revenues of $76 billion for the quarter ending March 31. $20 billion of those revenues came from the firm’s Game & Network Services Segment.
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Sony had warned about the impact of the ongoing component shortage, but it still managed to sell less than half the PlayStations 5s in the quarter compared to what analysts expected. Year-over-year, PS5 sales are down, too: Sony sold 11.5 million units in fiscal 2021 but just 7.8 million units in fiscal 2022. Granted, the issue isn’t demand. Sony just can’t make enough consoles.
But there are other troubling signs, too. PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers fell in the year, from 47.6 million to 47.4 million. And its monthly active users number fell from 109 million to 106 million in the same time period.
Looking forward, Sony told investors that it expects to drive PS5 sales upward in the current fiscal year while it seeks to lower the cost of making the console. It says it should sell over 18 million PS5 consoles in the current fiscal year. And while it will spend more money on first-party titles this year, it expects third-party game sales to increase as well.