Sony has published their consolidated financial results for the fiscal year 2017 which ended March 31, 2018. In the Game & Network Services segment, they announced that PlayStation 4 has shipped an additional 19 million units throughout the fiscal year. Although this is a million less than the last FY 2016, this brings the total count of worldwide PlayStation 4 shipments to 79 million.
In FY 2017, Sony’s Game & Network Services segment recorded 1,943.8 billion yen in sales, which is a significant increase from FY 2016’s 1,649.8 billion yen. This is accredited to the following factors:
- Increase in PlayStation®4 (PS4™) software sales including sales through the
network- Impact of foreign exchange rates
- Increase in the number of subscribers for PlayStation®Plus, a paid
membership service
The operating income also saw a significant increase of 41.9 billion yen, from 135.6 to 177.5 billion yen. Sony notes that although sales throughout the year had increased, they also had seen increases in selling, general, and administrative expenses.
As for the new fiscal year 2018, which started on April 1 this year and will end on March 31, 2019, Sony is forecasting a slight decrease in sales to 1,900 billion yen and a 12.5 billion yen increase of operating income to 190 billion yen. Although Sony is expecting PS4 hardware shipments in the new fiscal year to drop even more to 16 million units, they believe it will be offset by a further increase in PS4 software sales including digital sales.
