Despite ‘essentially flat’ sales, Sony has seen a big increase in profits as it begins to focus more on development of the next gen PS6.
Sony might have got on the wrong side of gamers, after announcing the end of physical discs, but it’s still sitting pretty in the financial department.
As noted in the company’s earnings report for Q1 2026, aka the three month period ending June 30, sales across Game & Network services reached ¥937.1 billion (£4.37 billion), which is a small increase from ¥936.5 billion (£4.36 billion) in the same period last year.
Sony describes sales as ‘essentially flat’, with the positive impact of foreign exchange rates offset by a decrease in hardware sales and third party software. However, operating income is up 37% year-on-year at ¥202.0 billion (£937.4 million).
According to Sony, this boost in profits is driven by US tariff refunds and foreign exchange rates. These profits, however, have been negatively impacted by cost increases, ‘including investments for the next generation platform and restructuring costs’.
In other words, Sony is ramping up investment into the PlayStation 6 (and/or its rumoured handheld), which perhaps suggests it is on track to launch in 2027 or 2028.
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On the hardware side, Sony shipped 1.6 million PlayStation 5 units during the quarter, which brings the system’s total sales to 95.3 million. While the 1.6 million sales is an improvement over the 1.5 million in the last quarter, it’s a decrease by 0.9 million from the same period last year.
A decline in sales is to be expected for a six-year-old console, but Sony is no doubt banking on GTA 6 to give the system one last push.
The PlayStation 5 is still the eighth best-selling console of all time, ahead of the PlayStation 3 and behind the Wii, which achieved 101.63 million sales over its lifetime. If you subtract handheld systems like the Nintendo DS and Game Boy, it is the sixth best-selling console ever.
If you want to better understand why Sony is ditching physical discs, the company sold 66.1 million PlayStation 4 and 5 games during the period, with a digital download ratio of 82%. Of these sales, 6 million were first-party games.
Although you could equally argue that creating a PR nightmare out of nothing, just because they weren’t making the maximum amount of profit out of 18% of their audience, is all an unnecessary blunder. Especially as the PlayStation 6 will no doubt be disc-less from the start.
Elsewhere, Sony said the monthly active users for PlayStation Network reached 125 million accounts in June, which is up 2% year-on-year and a record high for the month.
Based on these results, Sony has revised its revenue forecasts upwards for the rest of the financial year, by 3%, and its operating income expectations by 10%. This is due to US tariff refunds and an ‘improvement in costs’, although it will be negatively affected by ‘impact of adjustments to the FY26 first party title roadmap’.
It’s unclear what the latter means, but it suggests they did have something else lined up for the next 12 months, beyond Marvel’s Wolverine in September and God Of War Laufey in February 2027, but it’s now been delayed to sometime after March 2027.
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