Sony’s financial results for the first quarter of the financial year 2023 are out, revealing that PS5 unit sales are now at 41.7 million, thanks to 3.3 million units sold during the last quarter. That’s a sizable (37.5%) improvement over the 2.4 million PS5 units sold in Q1 2022.
Full-game software sales across PS4 and PS5 are also up in Q1 2023. 56.5 million units of PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 games were sold in the previous quarter, a 19.7% improvement over the performance of Q1 2022 (during which 47.2 million units were sold). Interestingly, this is due to third-party games since first-party sales were roughly identical at 6.6 million units.
PlayStation Network MAUs (monthly active users) are estimated at 108 million, which is higher than the Q1 2022 figure of 103 million. It’s also the same figure registered in Q4 2022. Interestingly, the digital download ratio appears to have decreased a bit. It was 79% in Q1 2022, and it went down to 72% in Q1 2023.
Sony revised upward the previous Game & Network Services (G&NS) forecast for the full 2023 financial year, which is set to end on March 31st, 2024. The new forecast of 4,170 billion yen is nearly 7% higher than the previous one (3,900 yen), and Sony also provided a detailed explanation.
Sales are expected to be higher than the April forecast due to an expected increase in sales of non-first-party titles including add-on content and the impact of foreign exchange rates. Operating income is expected to remain unchanged from the April forecast mainly due to the impact of the above-mentioned increase in sales of non-first party titles and an expected decrease in costs, substantially offset primarily by a deterioration in the profitability of PS5 hardware mainly due to changes in promotions by geographic region and the sales channel mix, as well as the impact of changes in the launch dates of a portion of first-party titles. Adjusted OIBDA is expected to be
higher than the April forecast, mainly due to the same factors affecting operating income.
A few months ago, the NPD Group (now known as Circana) claimed that PS5 unit sales were outpacing PS4 on a time-aligned basis. While the PlayStation 5 is still gaining momentum on the market, Sony is rumored to be preparing a PS5 Pro console to be released in November 2024. It would feature ‘accelerated ray tracing’ support and even allow for 8K resolution in games thanks to its nearly doubled Compute Units count. We’ll continue following all rumors, leaks, and official news of the PS5 Pro very closely; stay tuned.
