Sony Points to Black Myth: Wukong Success in Big PlayStation Quarter After Concord Disaster
Sony’s video game business saw impressive growth during the most recent financial quarter, boosted by sales of blockbuster action game Black Myth: Wukong that more than made up for the disastrous launch of Concord.
Sony’s Game & Network Services (G&NS) division, which includes PlayStation, brought in 1,071.5 billion yen (approx $7 billion) during the second quarter of the financial year (July to September 2024). That’s a “significant increase” of 12% year-on-year, Sony said. Profit tripled to 138.8 billion yen (approx $911 million), up a whopping 184% year-on-year. Those positive results were good enough for Sony to raise its financial year forecast for its gaming business.
Sony said the boost to revenue came from an increase in sales of non-first-party games, including add-on content (like microtransactions), as well as the impact of foreign exchange rates and an increase in sales from network services, mainly from PlayStation Plus. (Sony gets a cut of all sales on the PlayStation Store, and of course generates revenue from sales away from its platform, such as Steam.) Dragging those sales down, however, was the continued fall of PS5 sales.
On the operating income side, Sony said it had seen an improvement in hardware profitability (typically consoles are sold at a loss), as well as the aforementioned increase in sales of third-party games and network services.
Sony sold another 3.8 million PS5 units during the quarter, down 29% compared to the same period last year. The four-year-old console is now on 65.5 million shipped, with Sony recently admitting the PS5 is in the second half of its life cycle. PlayStation Network has 116 million monthly active users, flat quarter-on-quarter.
As reported by VGC, Sony specifically mentioned “a new sports title” (EA Sports FC 25 launched at the end of September) and “an action RPG title from China” (Black Myth: Wukong) for PlayStation’s sales success in the quarter.
Black Myth: Wukong, from Chinese developer Game Science, launched on
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