Sony continues to sell a relatively large number of PS4 games and achieves higher game sales

Sony has had another good quarter with its gaming division. As in the previous quarter, the company sold significantly more PlayStation 4 games than in the same period of 2019. Revenue from games also increased.

An explanation of the figures for the past second fiscal quarter, which ended September 30, shows that Sony sold 80.9 million PlayStation 4 games. That is 10.3 million more than in the same period last year. Although it is less than the 91 million PS4 games sold in the second quarter of this year, the figure is still relatively high, which is probably still partly caused by the corona pandemic.

Of the 80.9 million games, 12.4 million were made by our own studios. The biggest release from these own studios in the past quarter was the PlayStation 4 game Ghost of Tsushima. This samurai action game was released in July and sold 2.4 million units in the first three days of its release. In the second quarter of this year, 74 percent of software sales were made online and that fell to 59 percent. That means that a large majority of the games are still purchased from the PlayStation Store.

During the past quarter, Sony sold another 1.5 million PlayStation 4 consoles, bringing the total number of PS4 consoles sold to more than 113.5 million units. The number of PlayStation Plus subscribers is 45.9 million; this is a relatively small growth of nine hundred thousand compared to the second quarter of this year, but compared to the same quarter a year ago it is an increase of 9 million users.

Mainly driven by good sales, Sony’s Game & Network Services business increased its revenues from Japanese yen 454.4 billion a year ago to yen 505.6 billion in the past quarter. Converted, this is 3.7 and 4.1 billion euros respectively. The operating income increased from 531 million to 857 million euros. Sony’s total quarterly sales amounted to 2133.5 billion yen, about 17.4 billion euros. That is an increase of 2 percent compared to the same quarter in 2019.

Ghost of Tsushima