Ghost of Yotei outperforms Ghost of Tsushima to bolster Sony financials
Sony has confirmed that Ghost of Yotei exceeded expectations by outperforming its predecessor Ghost of Tsushima over the same period of time.
The PlayStation maker said the sequel made a significant contribution to its fiscal results during Q3. For context, Ghost of Tsushima topped 5 million sales in under four months. Ghost of Yotei launched in October 2025 and amassed 3.3 million sales during its first month on shelves.
Sony delivered the news in its fiscal report for the third quarter ended December 31, 2025. The company reported sales of 1.61 trillion yen ($10.3 billion) within its Games and Network Services (G&NS) segment, which houses its video game business. That represents a decrease of 4 percent year-on-year.
Sony said that downturn was the result of lower hardware sales, with PlayStation 5 sales totalling 8 million units during Q3. That's down on the 9.5 million units sold during the third quarter of the previous fiscal year. The PlayStation 5 has now sold-in over 92 million units worldwide.
Operating income within the division totalled 170 billion yen ($1.01 billion) during Q3—a year-over-year upswing of 19 percent. That increase was attributed to the impact of increased sales of network services and first-party software, which Sony said reached "record" levels during the third quarter.
"While PS5 hardware unit sales have decreased moderately in the latter half of the console cycle, software revenue from the PlayStation Store reached a record high during the quarter, primarily driven by the contribution of major third-party franchise titles and new hit releases," added the company. "PlayStation Plus significantly contributed to the results of the quarter as the shift to higher tiers of the service continued."
PlayStation Network boasted 132 million monthly active users (MAUs) during Q3—an uptick on the 129 million MAUs reported this time last year.
Discussing the potential impact of the RAM shortage affecting the tech industry, Sony said it is in a position to secure "the minimum quantity necessary" to manage the year-end selling season of the next fiscal year.
"Going forward, we intend to further negotiate with various suppliers to secure enough supply to meet the demand of our customers," it added. "Given the stage of our console cycle, our hardware sales strategy can be adjusted flexibly, and we intend to minimize the impact of the increased memory costs on this segment going forward by prioritizing monetization of the installed base to date and striving to further expand our software and network services revenue."
Based on the overall performance of G&NS, Sony has upwardly revised its forecast for the division. It now expects to deliver sales of 4.6 trillion yen and operating income of 510 billion yen by the end of the fiscal year in March 2026.
