Operating income of Sony Corporation increased 20% year-on-year to 359.2 billion yen, compared with sales of 2,696.5 billion yen in the third quarter of 2020 for the fiscal year ended December 2020. PlayStation 5 has sold a total of 4.5 million units as of the end of December since it started selling in November. This is despite the high demand for consoles as they have been out of stock since launch.
Sony is currently making good progress to reach its sales target of more than 7.6 million units but said it has not been able to adequately meet the high level of demand from its customers. The company added that it continues to do its utmost to ship as many units as possible to customers waiting for the PS5. The company’s first-party game title, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, recorded sales of 4.1 million copies as of the end of December.
Sales in the Game & Network Services segment increased 40% year-on-year to ¥ 883.2 billion in the third quarter, and PlayStation 5 was launched. Operating income increased 26.7 billion yen year-on-year to 80.2 billion yen. Increased sales of gaming software and network services increased 50% year-over-year, but were partially offset by increased costs associated with the launch of PS5 and recorded losses on PS5 hardware due to strategic pricing. I did.
In the electronics products and solutions business, including smartphones, sales in the third quarter of fiscal 2010 were almost flat at 649 billion yen year-on-year, and operating income increased 25.4 billion yen year-on-year to 105.8 billion yen. The company sold only 1 million smartphones this quarter, compared to 1.3 million a year ago.