Today Sony announced its financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2021, which ended on September 30, including an update on PS5 and PS4 shipments.
3.3 million PS5 and 0.2 million PS4 units were purchased by retailers worldwide during the quarter, which means that the grand total for PS4 as of September 30 is at 116.7 million units shipped. On the other hand, PS5 has shipped 13.4 million units in its lifetime.
Below you can check out an overview of the performance of the Game & Network Services business (which includes both PlayStation and PlayStation Network), with all the relevant figures including software sales and more.
We learn that revenue increased significantly (up 27% year-on-year, actually setting a record) due to higher PS5 hardware and third-party game sales (including DLC) partly offset by lower first-party game sales.
On the other hand, profit decreased significantly year-on-year due to lower PS4 sales, the fact that PS5 units were sold as a loss, and lower first-party game sales, partly offset by the higher third-party game and DLC sales mentioned above.
It’s worth mentioning for those who aren’t familiar with this kind of figure, that this doesn’t mean that PlayStation operated at a loss. They still made a very large profit, but it was simply lower than in the equivalent quarter in 2020. This is not unusual close to the beginning of a new generation.
Additional documentation about the gaming business’ performance reveals that the PlayStation Plus subscriber total was at 47.2 million as of September 30. On the other hand, PlayStation Network had 104 million monthly active users.
Speaking of Sony as a whole, all income numbers are in the black and showing improvement year-on-year both for the quarter and for the first half of the fiscal year.
If you’d like to compare, you can read our dedicated article about the previous financial results announced in August.
