Sony announced results for the quarter ending September 30, 2026, and PS5 sales declined. However, on the PlayStation side, revenue and profits increased.
Sales of the Game & Network Services division were 1,208.5 billion yen ($7.59 billion). Additionally, this figure increased by 8.6% compared to the same period last year.
Operating profit increased to 220.1 billion yen ($1.38 billion). This means an increase of 83%. But the context of the figure is important because there were one-off expenses last year.
How did profits increase while PS5 sales were falling?
The division had one-time expenses of 49.8 billion yen ($338 million) in the second quarter of last fiscal year. As a matter of fact, 31.5 billion yen ($214 million) of this amount was the impairment allocated for Bungie's intangible assets and other assets.
Therefore, when expenses are excluded, the growth is approximately 29%. Still a strong result, but not the nearly double increase the raw numbers suggest. Adjusted OIBDA was 244.9 billion yen ($1.54 billion), up approximately 23% annually. In addition, this figure is the division's highest quarterly operating profit in the last two fiscal years.
Software Rises While Console Sales Fall
Sony shipped 2.6 million PS5s this quarter. Last year, this figure was 4.0 million. Thus, PS5 sales fell by 35% annually. A total of 4.2 million units was also reached in the first half of the fiscal year, although it was 6.5 million in this period last year. On the other hand, total shipments increased from 93.7 million on March 31, 2026 to 97.9 million as of September 30.
Hardware revenue fell much less than units. It decreased by only 4.8% to 219.7 billion yen ($1.38 billion). Because price increases and the weakening yen explain most of this difference. On the software side, the table is as follows:
Full game sales: 88.2 million units (+7.9 million)
First-party games: 8.2 million units, up 30%
Gaming software revenue: 708.5 billion yen ($4.45 billion), up 12.6%
Digital full game sales: 330.8 billion yen ($2.08 billion), up 23%
DLC and expansion packs: 4.4% growth
Network Services, which includes PlayStation Plus and advertising, increased by 19.5% to 218.3 billion yen ($1.37 billion). Moreover, this is the fastest growing item in the department. The number of monthly active users also increased from 119 million to 127 million. Thus, although PS5 sales decreased, the service side grew.
Wolverine Sales and Annual Expectation
Insomniac's Marvel's Wolverine reached 2.4 million units as of November 4, fifty days after its September 15 release. For comparison: Marvel's Spider-Man 2 sold 2.5 million copies on its first day. Ghost of Yōtei reached 3.3 million in 32 days. Wolverine is behind both, but the gap isn't huge.
Sony also raised its annual forecast. The sales target increased from 4,540 billion yen ($29.67 billion) to 4,830 billion yen ($31.57 billion). The operating profit target increased from 660 billion yen ($4.31 billion) to 700 billion yen ($4.58 billion). Accordingly, this means 51% growth compared to the previous fiscal year.
Although PS5 sales in particular have weakened, the results show that PlayStation is increasingly turning into a software and services business. As a matter of fact, Sony's decision to stop physical disc production as of January 2028 is also in line with this line.
PS5 approached 100 million units
According to Sony's report, total sales of PS5 reached 97.9 million with 2.6 million consoles sold in the quarter ending September 30, 2026. The console has been on sale since June 2020, and the company is expected to cross the 100 million threshold during the holiday season.
Even though console demand is slowing down, the gaming side is growing. Game sales increased by 9.8 million units compared to the same quarter last year; The share of digital downloads in full game sales increased from 72 percent to 78 percent. The number of monthly active PlayStation Network users also increased from 119 million to 127 million.
