Sony delivers mixed PlayStation results in latest earnings report

It's that time of the year when companies deliver their quarterly reports for July - September, and early this morning it was Sony's turn to reveal how they have been performing during the last three months.

It turns out it was something of a mixed bag, as PlayStation 5 sales were 3.3 million, which is exactly the same as last year. While these are impressive numbers, it also shows that Sony hasn't been able to increase the output of the console that has now reached the 25 million milestone.

PlayStation Plus, which was recently revamped with a three level tier system, also struggles somewhat as the number of subscribers declined from 47.3 million to 45.4 million (third declining quarter in a row). It should be pointed out however that the revenue from each subscription increased by 21% compared to the same quarter last year.

Combined with a decline in physical game sales, expensive game development, buying Bungie and the expensive dollar, it led to the operating income for the games segment falling almost 50% for the quarter. As a result, Sony has therefore cut the expected annual profit for the games segment from 255 billion yen (€1.75 / £1.5 billion) to 225 billion yen (€1.54 / £1.3 billion).

The Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda had this to say about Sony's report in a comment to Bloomberg:

"Performance of Sony's two major pillars, games and image sensors, was bad and masked by the weak yen. PlayStation software sales continued to be lacklustre and still-declining PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers are concerning."

Thanks, The Verge.