Sony's Playstation 5 has been sold nearly 55 million times so far.Image: Cornerstone
Business News
Electronics and entertainment group Sony benefited from brisk demand for its gaming and networking division in its important Christmas quarter. However, working with the PS5 gaming console was worse than expected. Instead of 25 million PS5 sales in the current fiscal year (until the end of March), the Japanese now expect 21 million sales.
Since its launch in November 2020, the PS5 has been sold 54.8 million times. For comparison: Nintendo has managed to sell its Switch 139.4 million times since March 2017, and expects an additional 15.5 million sales for the current fiscal year, even though a follow-up console is just around the corner.
Sony managed to sell a good 8 million consoles in the Christmas quarter, but the strong Christmas business could no longer offset sales in the first two quarters, which were below expectations. For the full fiscal year, the Japanese group expects slightly lower revenues than before: the target is now 12.3 trillion yen (76.3 billion euros), after raising the forecast to 12.4 trillion three months ago. Sony announced on Wednesday that in the first nine months, revenue rose by a fifth to 9.5 trillion yen.
The board is somewhat more confident about its operating and surplus results for the year as a whole. Accordingly, profits attributable to shareholders should now reach 920 billion yen. However, in the previous year, Sony made a healthy profit of 1 trillion yen.
(initial/sda/awp/dpa)
