Sony sold 1.5 million PlayStation 5 consoles during Q4. That’s a pretty notable year-on-year decline when compared with the 2.8 million console sales it amassed this time last year.
As noted in Sony’s earnings report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2026 (FY25), PlayStation 5 hardware sales totalled 16 million units worldwide. By comparison, the current-generation console sold 18.5 million units across FY24.
The downturn comes after Sony raised the price of PlayStation 5 hardware in the United States in August 2025. Additional price increases have since been announced in the U.S, Europe, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
Weighing in on the console’s wider performance, Sony said cumulative PS5 unit sales exceeded 93 million units as of the end of March. “This expanded installed base contributed to stable profits from software and network services,” added the company.
The entire PlayStation platform boasted 125 million monthly active users (MAUs) during Q4, FY25—peaking at 133 million MAUs in Q3.
Sony plans to base FY26 hardware forecasts on the volume of memory it can procure at “reasonable prices” amid an ongoing component shortage driven by widespread investment in AI data centers. Even so, the company said it expects hardware profitability to be “essentially the same as FY25.”
In a fireside chat with Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) president and CEO, Hideaki Nishino, and studio business group CEO Herman Hurst, the PlayStation 5 was described as the company’s most profitable hardware generation to date with over $136 billion in cumulative sales.
During that presentation, Sony said it must continue operating with “financial discipline to drive operating leverage while investing in IP, operations, publishing and technology.”
The Japanese company added that it is now proactively utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to “drive efficiencies and enhance player & creator experiences, and experimentation of potential applications.” More on that in this supplemental earnings presentation (starting on page 29).
Those remarks come just months after Sony shuttered internal studios Bluepoint Games and Dark Outlaw Games.
Across the entire fiscal year, Sony’s Games & Network Services (G&NS) division—which houses its video game business—delivered flat year-on-year sales of 4 trillion 685.7 billion yen. Operating income increased 12 percent year-on-year to 463.3 billion yen and reached a record high for the segment.
Looking ahead, Sony is forecasting sales of 4 trillion 420 billion yen and operating income of 600 billion yen within its G&NS division.