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The story
Bloomberg reporter Mochizuki posted on X (formerly Twitter) comparing Nintendo’s and Sony’s earnings, both released the same day, saying the two “showed a stark contrast.” Sony posted strong results that beat market expectations thanks to synergy across games, film, and music, while Nintendo fell short of expectations due to a software shortage and a sales slump tied to the Switch 2 price hike. On 5ch’s gaming (geha) board, discussion centered on the numbers — Sony’s gaming division posted about ¥900 billion in annual operating profit versus Nintendo’s roughly ¥370 billion — along with differences in revenue accounting methods and reliance on third-party publishers.
Nintendo: games are still the pillar, but it’s in a hardware sales-expansion phase and still struggling to build up its software lineup. Sony: games have moved past the stage of needing to chase hardware sales, the software lineup is robust, and on top of that, film and music have grown to the point where they feed customers to each other — a highly developed virtuous cycle. The two companies’ earnings showed a stark contrast.
NEW: Sony’s earnings came in strong, beating market expectations. Games, film, and music each scored major hits, creating a clean synergy effect where each division lifts the others’ sales.
NEW: Nintendo’s earnings came in weak, missing market expectations. Analysts point to a thin software lineup and a bigger-than-expected sales drop from the price hike. With Zelda as virtually the only major title, the year-end sales season looks tough too, and the view is that momentum across the Switch 2 lineup is fading faster than expected.
Source: x.com / original post here
What people said
Sony Gaming division (current pace)
~¥900 billion
Nintendo
~¥370 billion
SIE (Sony Interactive Entertainment) is guaranteed to beat forecasts thanks to the GTA6 effect
PlayStation is just too rock-solid as a platform — Nintendo, selling gimmick toys, can't compete no matter how hard it tries
'I'm a Nintendo fanboy but…' — what kind of stance is that lol
Doesn't even work as a fake-fan bit, makes no sense
Why though
There aren't any real Sony fans left here anyway
If they're a shill, they're not a customer, so honestly that move checks out
It's more that — the fact that almost all 10-million-sellers are first-party, with first-party covering 80% of the whole platform, actually means the platform business itself isn't working well
So no matter how fun and how big a hit a first-party game is, as a business it'll never catch up to Sony's games division
Yeah, making profit off a crappy Splatoon and a reheated Zelda isn't going to satisfy actual gamers
>Sony's games have moved past needing to chase hardware sales, and the software lineup is robust too
'Software lineup is robust'?
What are you even talking about???
Probably referring to miHoYo, Wuthering Waves ('鳴潮'), and NTE ('Neverness to Everness') — in the sense that they can coast on those without putting out new releases…
Here, it's spelled right out lol
▪ Sony G&NS (Game & Network Services)
Software sales: ¥1,235.1 billion
Subscription sales: ¥426.9 billion
Total: ¥1,662.0 billion
▪ Nintendo
Software sales: ¥466.5 billion
Subscription sales: included in the software sales figure above
(Of which third-party is at most ¥109.2 billion: converted to gross-basis accounting, that would add up to +¥254.7 billion)
*The 'at most' figure assumes subscription revenue was ¥0
Source
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/ir/pdf/2026/261105_3.pdf
Over 90% of Sony's sales are third-party
And that over-90% is booked gross (recording the full sale price as revenue, as-is)
It's not absorbing anything — that's why the trend is tracking below PS4
Footnote *3 isn't even filled in and they already went and made *4 lol
This just looks like they're setting themselves up for a massive boomerang once GTA (VI) drops 😅
The increase in players absorbed from Xbox and the decrease from players who stayed on PS4 without buying a PS5 are probably canceling out, landing the trend just under PS4
That would explain the rise in MAU across the PS platform as a whole
Even if that theory's right, no new software is coming out for PS4 anymore, so it means nothing for third parties
Padding your MAU with customers who only ever buy subscriptions doesn't amount to much
Weird
They're seriously making their money off subscriptions and spending in Chinese gacha games
Asia maybe, but in the West Chinese games aren't ranked that high, are they
Even though Genshin Impact — mostly played on mobile and PC — has dropped a lot, it's still on top on 'trash-tation' (derogatory 5ch nickname for PlayStation). That just shows everything else on the platform is so disastrous that Genshin only looks decent by comparison
Wii U
Switch 2
Why does Nintendo always stumble with the follow-up console that sticks to the same approach right after a hit?
Probably because the pattern is: lean on third parties → fail → pivot to a new gimmick
If they did it like Sony, they could become like Sony — prioritize graphics, and don't let first-party overstep
In short, that would make them the kind of company that gets bashed here
If Sony disappeared, nobody would even notice lol
In their world, it only makes sense if Nintendo is overwhelmingly dominant and Sony is bleeding losses on the verge of pulling out
Back in the Super Famicom days, Famitsu's rankings really did line up almost exactly with the actual state of the global game industry, that much is true
But at this point they've become completely disconnected from it
I wonder what face they're making while typing that lol
Globally, Switch & Switch 2 combined are still outselling it lol
Background and key points of this discussion
Nintendo’s and Sony’s earnings were both released on the same day, November 5, 2026, and Mochizuki’s post that day compared the two companies. The figures quoted in the thread — Sony’s gaming division posting roughly ¥900 billion in annual operating profit versus Nintendo’s roughly ¥370 billion — are a straightforward scale comparison, but the underlying structures differ significantly. Over 90% of Sony’s software sales come from third-party titles, and because Sony books them on a ‘gross’ basis (recording the full sale price as revenue), the numbers balloon easily. Nintendo, by contrast, centers on first-party titles, with third-party revenue booked mainly as royalty income — so even though both use the term ‘software sales,’ the accounting meaning differs. Some replies in the thread point out this difference in accounting methods, and it’s worth keeping in mind that judging ‘which is better’ from raw figures alone is premature. As for the reasons behind Nintendo’s weaker showing, commenters point to the sales decline from the Switch 2 price hike and a thin software lineup — leaning on little more than a Zelda remaster.
* This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch Hardware/Industry (Geha) board thread ‘[Sad News] Bloomberg’s Mochizuki: ‘Nintendo and Sony earnings showed a stark contrast’.’
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