There’s not too much to shout about in Sony’s financial report for the fiscal year ending in March 2017, FY2016, but the PlayStation 4 continues to be a bright spot for the company. Selling 20 million consoles in the past 12 months – an increase over the 17.7 million sold in the year ending March 2016 – it’s now of even greater importance for the Japanese giant as other parts of the company struggle.
Update: Trying to picture just how many consoles have been sold through to customers is a little tricky. Last we heard, Sony had shipped 57.1 million consoles and sold 53.4 million through to customers. These were the figures revealed at CES earlier this year. 2.9 million consoles have been added to the 57.1 million shipped, making a total of 60 million shipped consoles. Consoles sold will naturally track behind that figure, but a good estimate would place it in the 55-56 million range.
Not only that, but with the slimmer, cheaper PlayStation 4 redesign and the PlayStation 4 Pro launches last year, Sony have managed to reduce the cost of hardware manufacture, helping to spur their gaming profits from 46.9 billion Yen (£325 million) to 135.6 billion Yen (£939 million), a near threefold increase.
Update: There’s no breakdown of how well the PlayStation 4 Pro has sold, let alone how the PlayStation VR has sold, beyond the 915,000 figure Sony previously revealed in February.
The projection for the next twelve months sees Sony expecting console sales to slow a little to 18 million, but overall sales and operating income are expected to increase as there are more consoles on the market and customers.
However, the rest of Sony’s business is stuttering, with the mobile division revenue dropping by nearly a third, various factors including exchange rates and the Kumamoto earthquake causing their camera sensors business to dropping a similar amount. The camera sensors business is expected to rebound from those events next year, so there isn’t too much cause for concern, but the company’s revenues did fall by 6.2% over FY2015, now at 7,603 billion Yen (£52.6 billion) compared to 8,105 billion Yen (£56.1 billion).
bunimomike
Do we have any recent sales figures for the PS4? I believe it’s still ahead of the PS2 sales curve which is the stuff of legends.
Stefan L
Yeah, it’s very nearly at 60 million. Was something like 57 million shipped at the end of 2016.
bunimomike
Ooo, it’s close. Just been looking at the figures and comparing. PS4 is about three million ahead when compared to the PS2 at the same point in the life-cycle. Stunning achievement, though.
Paulo Vinicius Radtke
That’s a good number, though I don’t think Sony will top the PS2 number significantly with respect to the market share. The market back then in 2001-2005 was much different. Not only it was smaller to make the PS2 the stuff of legends, as Sony held all cards, and the combined XBox plus Gamecube lifetime sales weren’t as good as the XBox One sales are now. Of course, the market has enlarged a lot, which may favor Sony to reach similar sales numbers to PS2. But in the current potential market, they’d need to significantly surpass the PS2 sales to say they have the same market share as before.
Stefan L
Actually it’s spot on 60 million shipped, with 2.9 million in the first three months of 2017. The last actual sales figure is 53.4 million, so guess it’s around 55-56 million consoles sold?
gazzagb
No mention of how many PSVR units sold?
Andrewww
Would’ve liked to know that too, but no, ‘no further information on PSVR sales beyond the 915,000 unit figure revealed in February’, according to gamesindustry.biz.
camdaz
And how many of the 20 million consoles sold are Pros?
Stefan L
Well, that’d be significantly less than the 12.6 million shipped since September.
beeje13
I don’t know what they’re going to do with mobile now… It’s a shame as I really like the Xperia phones.
Camera sensors should do well if dual-cam phones take off.