Sony gaming earnings grow despite weak PS5 sales

Helldivers 2 appears to be a main driver

Sony

Sony’s earnings report for the first quarter of 2024 has been published, revealing a weak Q1 for PS5 sales: 2.4 million consoles have been sold in Q1 of FY 2024 (that’s the months of April, May, and June 2024), which is 0.9 million less than during the same period in the previous year, as listed in the supplemental materials.

Sony predicted PS5 sales to slow down further in an earlier report this year, so this development shouldn’t come as a surprise to the company.

Overall sales of Sony’s “Game & Network Services” segment grew immensely despite the weak hardware numbers: Sales went up by 93% compared to last year and operating income grew by 16%.

Drivers behind the growth are Sony’s network services – which includes products like PSN and PS Plus – and software sales. Though the sales of both physical and digital games were down compared to last year, the sale of add-on content and “other software” saw drastic increases.

As you might imagine, add-on content consists of things like DLC and microtransactions. 

The “other software” segment describes the sale of first-party games and add-on content on other platforms. Helldivers 2, which launched earlier this year on PC and PS5 and became a smash hit on Steam, is very likely one of the primary growth factors in this segment, which doubled its sales compared to the previous year. 

Arrowhead’s title likely contributed significantly to the solid add-on content numbers on PS5 as well. Overall, it sold more than 12 million copies on PC and PS5 combined so far.

Helldivers 2 likely continues to be a driving force behind Sony's strong numbers on PC. / Arrowhead / Sony

Another high-profile PC release falling into the report’s observed window of time is Sucker Punch Productions’ Ghost of Tsushima – the former PlayStation-exclusive came to PC in May 2024.

Sales of peripherals were stronger than last year as well, possibly due to the announcement that PC support for PS VR2 was being worked on. The VR headset launched in 2023 had a very slow start in sales for a variety of reasons, such as a high price point and lackluster catalog of games.

On the digital vs. physical side, the share of digital software sales reached a new height: 80% of all PS4 and PS5 software sales in Q1 of FY 2024 were digital.