As part of today’s (Thursday 5th November, 2026) financial results, Sony has confirmed that monthly active users, referred to as MAU, across both PlayStation 4 and 5, reached 127 million in September. This represents a seven percent growth year-on-year for the company, and sets a new record high.
In Layman’s terms, this simply means that more people are engaged with the PlayStation ecosystem now than ever before. And it’s not just that there are more people using machines and occasionally booting up their consoles; active play time also increased over the past quarter, too, with total logged play time increasing by four percent, year-on-year. As a result, Sony and PlayStation noted that its Game & Network Services division saw revenue grow by nine percent year-on-year, resulting in operating profit rising by 83 percent year-on-year.
Notably, despite its mixed reception, Marvel’s Wolverine was name-checked as a driving force for the decent performance over the past quarter – but that shouldn’t be a surprise for anyone that’s actually been paying attention to how the game performed. The game sold through 2.4 million copies as of 4th November (so, in roughly 50 days). Ghost of Yotei, meanwhile, has sold through 3.3 million since its launch in October 2025.
More people playing consoles, and for longer – it must all be good news for Sony right? Well, not all the graphs are showing growth. PS5 hardware sales continue to gradually decline: in the reporting period, Sony sold 2.6 million PS5 consoles, down from 4 million in the same quarter in 2025. But, with 100 million PS5 units out in the wild, and 127 million PlayStation accounts across the whole ecosystem, Sony doesn’t seem that worried: instead, the company is now focusing on converting those with active accounts into more viable customers.
Elsewhere in the results, we heard from Sony CFO Lin Tao that the PlayStation 6 is on track and “progressing as scheduled”, with “solid progress” expected on the machine in 2027. Regarding those falling PS5 sales, Tao also referenced that, and says it’s all part of the natural cycle of console launches and iteration. “Although new PS5 unit sales are gradually declining as expected at this stage of the console life cycle, the PlayStation platform continues to expand and grow in a stable manner,” Tao explained. “[Next year,] we intend to make solid progress in preparing for the next-generation platform.”
It must be encouraging for Sony to see this growth in this quarter, especially after all the bad press and furore around the company’s decision to end the manufacturing of PlayStation discs by January 2028. It seems to be a core part of the gaming audience’s understanding of game ownership, the decision has been widely contested as anti-consumer. It’s caused a lot of bad blood with PlayStation players over the past six months, but – seemingly, given these results – that has translated to very little material impact on Sony’s bottom line.
