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Sony now expects to sell 4 million fewer PS5 consoles in its 2023 fiscal year ending March 31st compared to previous projections, Bloomberg <\/em>reports<\/a>. The revision came as part of today\u2019s third-quarter earnings release<\/a> which saw Sony lower the PS5 sales forecast from the 25 million consoles it expected to sell down to 21 million.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n While PS5 sales were up in Sony\u2019s third quarter, increasing to 8.2 million units from 6.3 million in the same quarter the previous year, Bloomberg <\/em>notes that this was roughly a million units lower than it had previously projected. That\u2019s despite the release of the big first-party title Spider-Man 2<\/em>, strong sales of third-party titles, and the launch of a new slimmer PS5 in November<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In its third quarter, Sony\u2019s gaming revenue was up 16 percent versus the same period the previous year, sitting at 1.4 trillion yen (around $9.3 billion), but operating income was down 26 percent to 86.1 billion yen (around $572 million) due to promotions in the third quarter ending on December 31st.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n According to Sony, the company plans to emphasize profitability over unit sales as the console approaches its fourth birthday. \u201cLooking ahead, PS5 will enter the latter stage of its life cycle,\u201d said Sony senior vice president Naomi Matsuoka in comments reported by Bloomberg<\/em>. \u201cAs such, we will put more emphasis on the balance between profitability and sales. For this reason, we expect the annual sales pace of PS5 hardware will start falling from the next fiscal year.\u201d\u00a0Sony added it has no plans to release \u201cany new major existing franchise titles\u201d in its next fiscal year.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n