Sony Group Corp said on Friday that PlayStation 5 sales would increase by six million units this fiscal year, but that profit will fall from a record high due to weaker financial services revenues offsetting gains from gaming, music, and movies.
According to Refinitiv data, the Japanese corporation anticipates operating profit to slip 3.2% to 1.17 trillion yen ($8.65 billion) in the fiscal year ending March 31, down from an analyst’s average forecast of 1.275 trillion yen, reported on Reuters.
On the other hand, the increased performance of its gaming unit will be welcomed by the entertainment and electronics behemoth, which failed to produce enough PlayStation 5 game consoles to fulfill demand during the COVID-19 epidemic due to semiconductor supply chain problems.
“We can now deliver PlayStation 5 to almost anywhere in the world without keeping our customers waiting,” Sony Group President Hiroki Totoki said during a news conference following the company’s results announcement.
Sony, which competes with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Nintendo Co Ltd (7974.T), said it anticipates selling a record 25 million PlayStation 5 (PS5) consoles this fiscal year, up from 19.1 million in the previous year and more than twice the number it sold the year before.
The company expects profit in its gaming and network section to increase by 8% to 270 billion yen this fiscal year.
Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at Toyo Securities, said slow sales of videogame software, which is more lucrative than the console side, put a shadow over the game unit.
PlayStation 5 sales more than tripled year on year to 6.3 million consoles in the most recent quarter to March, while software sales dipped 3.5%.
“When you buy new hardware, you usually buy new software as well.” “Software sales should have grown in lockstep with hardware sales,” Yasuda remarked.
Sony anticipates marginally greater earnings in its music and film sectors this year, with revenues in financial services declining by a fifth.
Sony also forecasted a 5.8 percent drop in image sensor revenues to 200 billion yen.
Overall operational profit for the three months ending March 31 declined 7.3% to 128.5 billion yen, but full-year earnings increased to an all-time high of 1.21 trillion yen.
