Sony raises its game segment sales forecast by 160 bln yen and reports a record 132 million monthly active accounts

Written by Claude Sonnet 5.5, an AI model, from public records. Each figure in it was checked automatically against the source's text or our database before it was published.

On Feb 5, 2026, Sony Group filed a Form 6-K, the report a foreign company files with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, with the slides of its earnings presentation for the quarter ended Dec 31, 2025 attached. The slides put monthly active accounts on the PlayStation Network at a record 132 million in December 2025, the last month of the quarter, with total gameplay hours up year on year. Sony defined the figure as an estimate of the unique accounts that played games or used services on the network in that month, based on company research and open to later revision.1^,2^,3^,4^,5^,6

Game & Network Services, the game and network segment, had sales of 1,613.6 bln yen (Sony’s shorthand for billions of yen) in the quarter, against 1,682.3 bln yen a year earlier, a decrease of 68.7 bln yen or 4%. Its operating income was 140.8 bln yen against 118.1 bln yen, an increase of 22.8 bln yen or 19%. The slides counted each segment’s sales and operating income before intersegment transactions were eliminated, and its operating income left out unallocated corporate expenses. Sony said lower hardware sales on fewer units sold reduced segment sales, while exchange rates added 66.5 bln yen to them. For operating income, it listed exchange rates, which added 28.9 bln yen, higher network services sales and higher first-party game software sales as gains, and larger hardware losses as a drag.7^,8^,9^,10^,11^,12^,13

For FY2025, Sony raised its forecast for the segment’s sales to 4,630 bln yen from 4,470 bln yen in its November forecast, an increase of 160 bln yen or 4%, and its operating income forecast to 510 bln yen from 500 bln yen, an increase of 10 bln yen or 2%. Sony gave exchange rates as the reason for the higher sales forecast; for operating income it listed exchange rates and higher sales of game software titles that are not first-party, offset by changes in the release dates of first-party titles.14^,15^,16^,17

The group’s figures in the slides were for continuing operations, which left out the financial services business that Sony partly spun off effective Oct 1, 2025, and the year-earlier figures were re-presented the same way. Group sales were 3,713.7 bln yen, up 1% from 3,693.4 bln yen, and operating income was 515.0 bln yen, up 22% from 423.0 bln yen, a margin of 13.9% against 11.5%. On a constant currency basis, Sony said group sales decreased approximately 2%. Its FY2025 forecast for continuing operations was 12,300 bln yen of sales, up 300 bln yen from the November forecast, and 1,540 bln yen of operating income, up 110 bln yen, with an estimated 50 bln yen reduction in operating income from changes in US tariff policy already included.18^,19^,20^,21^,22^,14^,23

The slides were Sony’s own account, and they carried the company’s warning that risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from its forward-looking statements. In our records, Bungie, which makes Destiny 2 and Marathon, sits under Sony Interactive Entertainment, one of the 17 companies under Sony Group.24^,25^,26^,27^,28