PlayStation 5 Sales Declined 11 Percent Last Year

Sony sold 18.5 million PlayStation 5 videogame consoles in the fiscal year ending March 31, a decline of 11 percent from then 20.8 million it sold a year earlier. The firm has now sold 77.7 million PS5s, and it expects to ship about 15 million more in the current fiscal year. That’s the same unit sales that Nintendo recently predicted for its Switch 2.

Tied to that announcement, Sony reported that it earned a net income of approximately $7.3 billion on revenues of $82 billion in the fiscal year, excluding the financial services business that Sony plans to spin off. Those figures represent increases of 17 percent and 7 percent, respectively, year-over-year (YOY).

Sony’s PlayStation 5 sales are strong: The firm sold 87.4 million PS3 consoles in its lifetime, so it should slot in well above that by the time it’s replaced. The PS4 sold 117 million units, Sony said, while the OG PS hit 102 million units and the best-selling PS2 landed at 160 million units. (The portable PSP sold 76 million units.)

Software sales were up in FY2024, go figure: Overall PS5 software sales were 303.3 million, up 6 percent from the 286.4 million units one year prior. And first-party software sales were 28.9 million, down 28 percent from the 39.7 million units sold a year ago. 76 percent of PS5 games sold were digital, up from the 70 percent figure from the previous year.

Sony also reported that it has 124 million monthly active users on the PlayStation Network, up 5 percent from the 118 million in FY2023.

In the bad news department, Sony will likely raise PS5 prices in the United States soon to counter the illogical U.S. tariffs. The firm said it took a $700 million hit in the three months through March thanks to these tariffs, and it has already raised PS5 prices in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand to help address the additional cost burden.