Sony has revealed its latest financial earnings report and in doing so, has released the latest numbers for its hardware and software sales. PS4 sales have been confirmed to have reached a whopping 82.2 million units worldwide, with over 3.2 million units sold in the last quarter. That refers to the period between April 1 and June 30, 2018. Despite that, sales are actually down 100,000 units from the same period in the previous fiscal year. That feat is still impressive, proving that indeed PlayStation is winning this generation’s console war.
According to Sony Interactive Entertainment, the company has increased its previous forecast of 16 million PS4 consoles in the current fiscal year, which runs from April 1, 2018, to March 31, 2019, to 17 million units instead. Bloomberg reports that Sony has increased its gaming division’s expected full-year revenue by an incredible 15 percent, due to “higher than anticipated earnings” from the PlayStation division.
PlayStation revenue has been bolstered by record-breaking games like God of War, which experienced the largest digital launch of any console exclusive in history, and other recent successful games like Detroit Become Human. Operating profit of the gaming division has risen to 83.5 billion yen. Mobile games like Fate/Grand Order have also contributed to other divisions within Sony, with the music division operating profit increasing 28 percent to 32.1 billion yen.
However, the number of PS Plus subscribers has dropped to 33.9 million users from last year, with a considerable 300,000 drop. More gamers must be starting a new subscription around the start of the year, rather than the middle of the year. Statistics from earlier this year also reveal that digital sales of full-games experienced a 37 percent increase from last year. This means that more PS4 players are purchasing digital copies of games instead of physical retail copies. Physical games have proven to be the more popular option in the past, but it certainly looks like the trend is changing.
