Sony has increased full-year forecast for gaming division

Sony has released its latest financial results, showing an uptick across the board for its PlayStation business.

The company specifically cited increased sales revenue from its Game & Network Services division as a key factor in the company’s overall growth for the first half of its fiscal year. As such, it has increased its full-year forecast for games revenues.

PlayStation 5 has now passed 65 million units in its lifetime shipments, but the company noted that console sales continued to decline year-on-year.

Here’s what you need to know:

The numbers

H1 (three months ended September 30, 2024)

Sony Corporation	Game & Network Services
Net sales: ¥5.5 trillion ($36.1 billion, up 10% year-on-year)	Net sales: ¥1.9 trillion ($12.5 billion, up 12%)
Operating income: ¥638.5 billion ($4.2 billion, up 43%)	Operating income: ¥204.1 billion ($1.3 billion, up 108%)

Q2 (three months ended September 30, 2024)

Sony Corporation	Game & Network Services
Net sales: ¥3 trillion ($19.7 billion, up 9% year-on-year)	Net sales: ¥1.1 trillion ($7.2 billion, up 12%)
Operating income: ¥389.3 billion ($2.6 billion, up 57%)	Operating income: ¥138.8 billion ($911.9 million, up 184%)

The highlights

The growth in Game & Network Services was attributed primarily to rising sales of third party games (including add-on content) and network services (mainly PlayStation Plus), as well as benefits from changes in foreign exchange rates.

Sony has now revised its full-year forecast for the PlayStation business, previously given in August, to reflect this success.

Net sales were expected to reach ¥4.3 trillion ($28.3 billion) for the year ending March 31, 2025. Sony now forecasts sales of ¥4.5 trillion ($30 billion) – up 4% on the initial forecast, and 5% above last year’s results.

Meanwhile, operating income was predicted to reach ¥320 billion ($2.1 billion), now raised to ¥355 billion ($2.3 billion) – up 11% on the August forecast, and up 22% year-on-year.

PlayStation hardware profitability has also improved, but sales continued to decline.

6.2 million PS5 consoles were shipped in the six-month period, more than half of which was in the three months ended Septembmer 30 – but this is down on the 8.2 million shipped in the same period last year.

The H1 shipments brings PS5’s lifetime shipments to 65 million.

131.3 million full games were shipped during first half of the first year, of which 11.3 were first-party games. Coincidentally, this is the same number of first-party games shipped in same period last year, but total game shipments only reached 124.1 million in H1 FY2024 – further demonstrating the rise of third-party game sales this year.

Among the platform holder’s sales highlights, September’s Astro Bot shipped 1.5 million copies worldwide in its first month. The company also updated Ghost of Tsushima’s lifetime shipments figure, now at 13 million across both PC and PS5.

Monthly active users on PlayStation Plus for Q2 came in at 116 million – unchanged from the previous quarter, but up from the 107 million reported this time last year.