Operating income in Sony Group Corp.'s game and network services business rose 83% to 220.1 billion yen in the three months to Sept. 30, the company reported on Thursday, as sales of software and online services made up for a sharp drop in shipments of the PlayStation 5 console.

The result shows where the money in Sony's gaming arm now comes from. The PS5 is in its sixth year on sale and the console cycle is maturing, so the segment leans on games, subscriptions and its network of active players rather than hardware volume. For investors in Tokyo and across Asia who hold Sony as a proxy for the region's entertainment industry, the quarter suggested that profit can keep rising while unit sales fall.

Segment sales rose 9% to about 1.21 trillion yen, according to figures reported by Gaming.net. Part of the profit jump reflects a weak comparison: the year-earlier quarter carried 49.8 billion yen of one-time losses, and excluding those items operating income rose 29%, the same report said.

PS5 shipments fall as Sony software sales climb

Sony shipped 2.6 million PS5 units in the quarter, down from about 4 million a year earlier, according to Gaming.net. Hardware revenue slipped to 219.7 billion yen from 230.9 billion yen.

Software did the heavy lifting. Game software revenue reached 708.5 billion yen, and players bought 88.2 million copies of PS4 and PS5 games in the quarter, including 8.2 million first-party titles, Tech Insider reported.

The largest of those first-party releases was Marvel's Wolverine, developed by Sony's Insomniac Games studio and launched on Sept. 15. Sony estimated that the game had sold 2.4 million copies worldwide by Nov. 4, its 50th day on sale, according to both reports.

Engagement also held up. Monthly active users on the PlayStation Network reached about 127 million accounts in September, up 7% from a year earlier, and total playtime in the quarter rose 4%, Gaming.net reported.

Sony said it had absorbed higher prices for memory chips through promotions, pricing changes and cost cuts, according to Gaming.net. It did not give a figure for the impact in the reports reviewed by Capital Times. Rising memory chip prices tied to the AI boom have squeezed console makers' margins, AFP reported earlier this year.

Sony Group lifts full-year forecast to record levels

The gaming results fed into a broader upgrade. Sony raised its forecast for group operating profit in the fiscal year ending March 2027 to 1.87 trillion yen from 1.72 trillion yen, Jiji Press reported. It now expects net profit of 1.33 trillion yen, up from 1.21 trillion yen, on sales of 13 trillion yen, up from 12.5 trillion yen. All three figures would be records if met.

Sony also posted its best first-half results for sales, operating profit and net profit, helped by higher gaming revenue, according to Jiji. The new forecasts include about 16 billion yen of repair and other costs from the July earthquake in Kumamoto Prefecture, where Sony makes image sensors. The sensor plant has returned to its pre-quake operating level, the company said.

For the game segment alone, Sony raised its full-year sales forecast by 6% to 4.83 trillion yen from 4.54 trillion yen and lifted its operating income target to 700 billion yen from 660 billion yen, Gaming.net reported.

Chief Financial Officer Lin Tao told an online news conference that years of spending on entertainment had brought Sony to the point of "releasing a hit film each year," according to Jiji. She said she expects the company's intellectual property business to become more diversified, with films such as Spider-Man: Brand New Day expected to add to earnings.

What the PlayStation numbers mean for game publishers

The pattern in Sony's quarter, with fewer consoles sold but more revenue from each player, matters beyond Sony. Publishers that sell games on PlayStation, including large Japanese and Korean studios, depend on a big and active PS5 user base to sell their own titles.

The weaker hardware figure is the point to watch. A console base that grows more slowly limits how many new buyers each release can reach, and Sony is relying on price changes and cost cuts to protect margins while memory chips stay expensive. The October to December holiday quarter is the PlayStation business's biggest test of the year, and Sony has now raised its segment target to 700 billion yen going into it.