Sony has published new, official sales results of the PlayStation 4 in its fiscal year financial report. Don’t expect the PlayStation 5 either just yet!

In the 2018 fiscal year (between April 1 and March 31, 2019), the company has shipped 17.8 PlayStation 4 units. While it is a 1.2 million year-on-year decrease from the previous fiscal year’s 19 million, it’s a respectable result, as Sony still expected 17.5 units back in February, which was surpassed by the console that came out in late 2013. 2.6 million units were shipped in the previous fiscal quarter, which is a 0.1 million year-on-year increase. The PS4 is currently at 96.8 million units shipped, which means that Sony’s console might cross the 100-million barrier by the end of June when the next quarter ends.

Sony expects 16 million PlayStation 4s to be shipped in the current fiscal year, which, again, is a decrease, but don’t forget that there are more and more consoles out there, making the spread harder than before (unless the price is getting a cut, which could happen…). It makes sense. In the previous quarter, 54.7 million PlayStation 4 software (games) were sold, and that is a 2.7 million increase from the previous fiscal year. 45% of the sales were digital, which is another 2% towards digital from a year ago. The PlayStation Network has generated 12.8 billion dollar revenue in the previous fiscal year, which is a new record. Sony’s Game & Network Service arm (where the PlayStation brand is located) put together 20.9 billion – the declining PlayStation 4 sales were halted by the games’ and Plus subscriptions’ growth.

There were 36.4 million PlayStation Plus-subscribers at the end of March, which is a 2.2 million increase from 2018. (And we have to mention here that due to the calendar, Sony will reveal on May 1 what the next month’s PlayStation Plus games will be for the Plus subscribers – and the company is preparing a rewards system, which we discussed before.)

In the fiscal report, the next-gen PlayStation, which is still not called as PlayStation 5, got mentioned as well: „increase in development expenses for the next generation console.” Kotaku’s Jason Schreier says that Sony announced the console out of nowhere to avoid leaks, as the developers are getting the devkits soon.

On Twitter, we read from Yuji Nakamura, a Japanese Bloomberg reporter, that Sony has explained on a press conference that there are 700 thousand PlayStation Now subscribers, with a 40% annual increase. Is it a reaction to the Google Stadia?

Sony is investing its money into the next-gen PlayStation, which, according to Takashi Mochizuki (Wall Street Journal), will not launch in the next twelve months…

Source: Gematsu, GameSpot, Twitter, Twitter