Sony has shipped more than 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles to date as the company has significantly stepped up production.
Revealed during its latest earnings results, Sony sold a further 3.3 million PS5s in the three month period leading up to September 30, equalling the amount it shifted during the same period in 2021.
Sony has therefore sold around 5.7 million PS5s since the beginning of this financial year (April 2022), leaving the company in somewhat of an uphill battle if it's to reach its target of selling 18 million consoles by March 2023.
According to Sony’s executive deputy president and CFO Hiroki Totoki, however, the 18 million target is still achievable as Sony has exceeded its own expectations by fabricating 6.5 million PS5s during the Q2 period alone.
"We recognize that demand from customers for the PS5 continues to be strong as the actual sales situation at retail stores in the U.S. is such that, in September, it took an average of 17.5 hours to sell out of 100 thousand units after their arrival," Sony's earnings presentation reads.
"To meet this strong demand, we will do our utmost to bring forward supply into the year-end holiday selling season and aim to exceed our financial year 2022 forecast of 18 million units."
The crippling semiconductor chip shortage seriously hamstrung the creation of new PS5 consoles but this didn't stop the PS5 from surpassing 20 million units sold as of June, at which point Sony executive Veronica Rogers announced that the company was "planning on a significant ramp-up in PS5 production this year".
Totoki also noted that the PS5 price increase hadn’t significantly dampened demand for the console, but that this would be monitored moving forward. During this time, PlayStation hardware sales amounted to ¥179.2 billion (around $1.2 billion), up from ¥160.6 billion (around $1.09 billion) from Q2 2021.
On the software side of things PlayStation users bought a total of 62.5 million games across all platforms, 63% of which were digital downloads and 6.7 million of which were first party titles. The number of games sold is down significantly from Q2 2021, yet amounted to a revenue of around ¥370 billion (around $2.5 billion) - up from the ¥343 billion (around $2.3 million) from Q2 2021.
It was also revealed that God of War (2018) has now sold 23 million copies to date over all platforms, with Sony saying that it expects the sequel, God of War Ragnarok to do similarly well.
Overall sales for the gaming division were up 12% to ¥720.7 billion (around $4.9 billion) over the same period in 2021, but the operating income - which is the company’s profit once costs and expenses are taken into account - slumped significantly from ¥82.7 billion (around $562 million) in Q2 2021 to ¥42.1 billion ($286 million) in Q2 2022.
This reduction has been attributed to a range of factors including an increase in the cost of game development and decreases in sales from non-first party games relative to previous years. The figures also take into account money spent on acquisitions including Bungie, which was bought by Sony back in July for $3.7 billion.
Anthony Wood is a freelance science writer for IGN.
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