Sony Lifts PlayStation Outlook as Xbox and EA Withdraw from Circana's U.S. Digital Sales Panel

Sony Group raised its full-year FY2026 operating-profit forecast by 8 percent to ¥1.72 trillion (about $10.8 billion) after reporting first-quarter results on August 21 that showed net income of ¥342.2 billion ($2.15 billion), up 32 percent year over year. The upgrade was driven by stronger-than-expected performance in the PlayStation games business and by the return of U.S. tariff refunds after the Supreme Court invalidated the Trump administration's global tariffs in February 2026. The same week, Circana, the analytics firm formerly known as NPD, confirmed that both Microsoft and Electronic Arts have stopped sharing U.S. digital sales data, leaving the games-industry transparency picture measurably worse than it was a month ago.

What Drove Sony's Quarter

PlayStation division sales for the quarter ended June 30 were flat year over year at ¥937.1 billion ($5.88 billion), but operating income rose 37 percent to ¥202.0 billion ($1.27 billion), lifted by tariff refunds and favorable foreign-exchange rates. Total PlayStation monthly active users reached 125 million accounts in June, up 2 percent year over year, although total playtime during the quarter decreased 4 percent from a year-prior period that benefited from season updates and new hit titles. Sony sold 1.5 million PS5 units in the quarter, down from 2.5 million a year earlier, and now expects a major lift from Take-Two Interactive's Grand Theft Auto VI, scheduled for release in November. Sony Music revenue rose 21 percent, led by streaming growth and live events, while Sony Pictures revenue fell 13 percent as series deliveries dropped sharply.

What the Circana Data Gap Means

Circana's monthly U.S. hardware and software sales charts will now rely on estimates for Microsoft, Activision and Bethesda games, after Microsoft stopped being a digital data sharing panel participant as of the July 2026 report. EA's departure from the same panel, time-aligned with its going-private transition, removes a second major publisher from Circana's direct dataset. Sony and Bandai Namco are now the only confirmed publishers sharing digital sales data with Circana in the United States. Nintendo and Take-Two had already been off the panel. Circana analyst Mat Piscatella said U.S. physical software spending in July dropped to $85 million, the weakest figure recorded since Circana began tracking the market in 1995, with only two PlayStation games selling more than 10,000 physical copies in the week ending July 11.

Why Physical-Software Data Is Now the Anchor

PlayStation is ending disc production entirely in January 2028, and Xbox is widely expected to follow. Once that happens, Circana's U.S. charts will be entirely dependent on whatever publishers choose to share. If Sony follows Microsoft's lead and stops sharing digital data, the public picture of U.S. console gaming revenue will degrade to physical-only estimates for most publishers, with Sony first-party sales as the single remaining direct data point. The data loss is most consequential for analysts trying to size franchises like Call of Duty — the most consistently massive annual franchise in the industry — which after Activision's acquisition by Microsoft in 2023 has had its sales figures become significantly less visible to outside observers.

What to Watch Through Year-End

Three checkpoints follow. The Q2 Circana report, now delayed until October 8 because of a major internal methodology overhaul, will be the first formal read on how Circana handles a market with fewer publishers supplying digital data. Sony's Q2 FY2026 results in early November will reveal whether the Grand Theft Auto VI tailwind is real. And Microsoft's continued silence on why it pulled out of Circana's panel leaves open the question of whether Xbox is preparing for a strategic re-positioning that requires less external visibility into its sales performance — or simply protecting its competitive intelligence from rivals.