Sony says the PS6 is on schedule. On its second-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Sony said development of its next PlayStation is progressing as scheduled, and CFO Lin Tao put a date on the spending: “From next fiscal year onward, there will be investment in the new platform.” Sony’s next fiscal year starts in April 2027.
Tao added that Sony expects “solid progress” on the console during that year, but there is still no name, release date or price. “We will announce that at an appropriate time in the future,” he said.
PS6 spending starts in Sony’s fiscal year beginning April 2027
Sony first flagged next-generation spending in May, when its full-year forecast included more investment in a new platform. What’s new is the timing. Sony runs its fiscal year from April to March, so the spending Tao described begins with the year that starts April 1, 2027.
That doesn’t mean the console launches then. Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki said earlier this year that the company had not decided on a PS6 release date, and Sony gave no launch window on Thursday’s call.
Sony has already secured memory for the year starting April 2027
Memory prices have been the big worry for console makers this year. Sony said it has secured enough memory for its next business year and has offset rising memory costs through promotions, pricing and cost cuts. It expects hardware profitability to stay on par with last year.
PS5 shipped 2.6 million in the quarter, down from 4.0 million a year ago
The PS5 is slowing down, as Sony expected. It shipped 2.6 million units from July to September, down from 4.0 million in the same quarter last year, according to Sony’s PlayStation sales figures. That takes the PS5 to 97.9 million lifetime. “New PS5 unit sales are gradually declining as expected at this stage of the console life cycle,” Tao said.
The rest of the PlayStation business is growing. Sony reported game sales up 9 percent year on year, operating income up 89 percent, and 127 million monthly active users in September, a record for that month. It also raised its forecast for the games business. Sony’s results materials are on its investor relations site.
