Sony Posts Q3 2014 Financial Results As PS4 Sales Soar

There’s no doubt that the PS4 has done remarkably well in such a short amount of time on the market. Sony is not nearly likely to replicate the success of the PS2 (due to a much stronger competitor this generation), but that does not diminish the early success for the games division as we head towards the second half of this decade. Sony has posted their consolidated financial results for Q3 2014 (the final three months of 2014), revealing that the PS4 shipped 6.4 million units worldwide during the holiday period.

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When you contextually add that quarterly total to the 13.5 million PS4 units shipped as of Q2 2014 (July 1 – September 30, 2014), the PS4 has shipped just under 20 million units worldwide within its first 58.5 weeks on the market. It’s a remarkable feat for a games division that was so slow to get things going with the PS3 and its inaccessible $600 USD entry price point. That 6.4 million PS4’s shipped total is just under what the entire Xbox console division (360, One) shipped during the same time period, at 6.6 million. Furthermore, the Wii U managed to sell only 1.7 million units worldwide to retailers in those final 2014 months.

In comparison, however, the PS3 shipped a paltry 1.1 million units, and the PS Vita, PlayStation TV and PSP combined to ship only 1.4 million units in Q3 2014. With the PS3 maintaining its $200 price point, sales will start to diminish until they reach that impulse buy level of affordability. The same can’t be said for the Vita, however, as the portable entertainment section of the company is down in retailer sales by roughly a third. Game sales are up throughout division, shipping 147 million units this past holiday compared to 128 million over the same time in 2013.

Finally, Sony itself is doing much better in its current fiscal cycle than in previous years. They posted a net income of ¥89 billion yen (~$757.3 million) for the quarter, while posting a ¥27.6 billion yen operating income (~$226 million) for Sony Computer Entertainment. Still, for the complete fiscal 2014, Sony is forecasting a net income loss of ¥170 billion yen (~$1.4 billion) as of February 2015. Compared to the previous October fiscal 2014 forecasted loss of ¥230 billion, and you realize Sony is actually doing better than they expected this year. That still doesn’t take the sting out of losing hundreds of millions of dollars throughout the year.

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