Massive PS4 sales continue
Hip hip Hirai!
The sales success of the PlayStation 4 shows no sign of slowing down.
Today, Sony said it had sold another four million PS4s during the second quarter of its 2015 financial year, which ended on 30th September. All this before the recently-announced price-cut.
The PS4 has now shifted a whopping 29.3m units since going on sale in November 2013. By comparison, the PS2 had sold 24.99m units after the same length of time on sale. The PS3 had sold 16.6m, and the Xbox 360 13.4m. (Microsoft doesn't report Xbox One sales.) The Wii, though, is the clear home console leader. It had sold 34.55m during the same time on sale.
Sony's Game and Network Services division, of which PlayStation is a part, saw sales of 360.7bn yen (around £2bn) - up 16.5 per cent compared to the same period last year. Operating income was 23.9bn yen (around £130m), up by 13.1bn yen.
Sony said this "significant increase" was primarily due to a boost in PS4 software sales. PS3 software sales, as you'd expect, are in decline.
It's worth noting the Game and Network Services currently brings in more money than either of Sony's other divisions, including image sensors, TVs, mobile phones, movies and music.
Things are going so well in the land of PlayStation, Sony reckons it'll end up selling more PS4s by the end of the current financial year than previously thought. It predicts it'll have sold 17.5m PS4s during the 2015 financial year. It sold 14.8 during the 2014 financial year.
Overall, Sony is on the up. It returned to profitability with a group-wide net income of 33.6bn yen (around £182m) for the quarter. It's the company's fourth straight profit, showing boss Kaz Hirai's getting the job done after years of huge losses - although the turnaround has come at the cost of thousands of redundancies at struggling divisions.