Sony Ramps Up PlayStation 6 Spending As PS5 Closes In On 100M Sales
Tao also indicated that Sony will continue making substantial investments in the new platform starting in its next fiscal year, which begins in April 2027. Some next-generation development costs originally expected to be recognized this fiscal year will instead be accounted for next year due to differences in expense recognition timing. To be exact, Sony hasn't disclosed a specific budget for the project, any hardware specifications, nor even officially confirmed that the next console will be called PlayStation 6, but naming it anything else would be a huge upset.
Sony's latest financial results put cumulative PS5 shipments at approximately 97.9 million units worldwide through September 30, 2026. That's based on 93.7 million cumulative shipments at the end of March, followed by another 1.6 million in the first quarter and 2.6 million in the second quarter. The latter represents a 35% decline compared to the 4 million units shipped during the same period last year.
Indeed, Sony acknowledges that PS5 hardware sales are gradually declining, as expected at this stage of the console's lifecycle. However, PlayStation engagement remains healthy. Monthly active users reached 127 million in September, up 7% year-over-year, while total playtime increased 4%. Full-game software sales across PS4 and PS5 also climbed to 88.2 million units during the quarter, up from 80.3 million a year earlier, so the platform is definitely robust.
The rumored specs for the PlayStation 6 are pretty familiar, with eight AMD Zen 6 CPU cores, an RDNA 5 GPU with as many as 54 compute units, and potentially as much as 40GB of GDDR7 memory on a slim 160-bit bus. There's also the PlayStation "Canis" handheld, which will supposedly run PS5 games natively. Hopefully, more details about Sony's next-generation plans emerge as the company progresses through its mid-range business plan.
