Sony officially declared the PlayStation 5 shortage a thing of the past earlier this month. With good reason, according to the latest quarterly figures of the Japanese company. In the months of October, November and December, 7.1 million copies of the PlayStation 5 were shipped. In the same period a year earlier, there were still 3.9 million.
A total of 32.1 million copies of the PS5 have now been shipped since the sales started. Sony is so confident of the continued demand for the PlayStation 5 that it has raised its outlook for this year by 1 million to an expected 19 million units.
Sony expects to ship 6.2 million PS5s in the current quarter. Sony couldn’t even do that with the popular predecessor PlayStation 4: that PS4 was sold no more than 3 million times in the first quarter of a year.
‘Performance strong in this climate’
The number of subscribers to PlayStation Plus rose slightly to 46.4 million from the previous quarter, but a year ago there were still more subscribers at 48 million. Turnover did increase: 17 percent higher than last year, probably due to the fanning out of one PlayStation Plus subscription to three options. Some of the users have apparently taken out a more expensive subscription, so the turnover per customer is increasing.
Sony has raised its profit forecast for this year from 1.16 to 1.18 billion yen (8.4 billion euros). According to Sony, that increase is due to the games branch and better-than-expected currency exchanges. The expectation is 2 percent lower than last year’s profit, but analysts say that is strong.
“Given the current environment of slowing global demand for electronics, it’s surprising that Sony’s earnings are in line with expectations,” Morningstar Investment Service analyst Kazunori Ito told Bloomberg.
