Sony Raises Its PlayStation Forecast and Tells Analysts to Expect a GTA 6 Contribution

Sony has raised the full-year forecast for its PlayStation business and told analysts to expect GTA 6 to add to it this fiscal year. The figures were filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on November 5, with the company's results for the quarter that ended on September 30.

"GTA VI there will be contribution this fiscal year," chief financial officer Lin Tao said on the November 5 earnings call, in Sony's translation. "But even looking at series games titles in the past, these games have driven the growth for multiple years." The filing itself does not name the game.

The numbers

Sony's Game and Network Services segment took in 1,208.5 billion yen in the quarter, up 9% on the same quarter last year, and made an operating profit of 220.1 billion yen, up 83%.

For the year to March 2027, Sony now expects the segment to make 4,830 billion yen in sales, 290 billion yen more than it forecast in July, and 700 billion yen in operating income, up 40 billion yen. The company lifted its consolidated forecast as well, to 13,000 billion yen in sales and 1,870 billion yen in operating income.

The filing credits an "increase in sales of non-first-party game software titles" among the reasons for the segment's improvement. Sony sold 2.6 million PS5 consoles in the quarter, for 97.9 million since launch, and counted 127 million monthly active users, as Simulation Daily reported from the results.

Sony is not counting on one game for hardware

Asked whether GTA 6 would push players to buy a PS5, Tao pointed at the existing user base rather than the release. Sony's plan rests on those 127 million accounts, she said, and hardware unit sales "will go down gradually" as the console gets older, with pricing and cost cuts protecting the profit.

Take-Two has not published its own pre-order figures. The most-quoted estimate is Sensor Tower's, which put GTA 6 digital pre-orders at 7.71 million copies and about $750 million at the start of November.

GTA 6 is released on November 19, 2026, on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Pre-loading starts on November 10.