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Strong growth in Sony’s Game & Network Services (G&NS) and Music divisions, driven by the launch of the PlayStation 5 video game console and strong demand for streaming music content helped the company report improved sales in its third quarter (ended Dec. 31), the company said Feb. 3.

Sony’s total Q3 revenue increased 9% from a year earlier, to 2.7 trillion yen, while operating income jumped 20% to 359.2 billion yen and profit soared 62% to 371.9 billion yen, the company said.

G&NS sales grew 40% from a year ago to 883.2 billion yen, according to Sony. Operating income in the division increased by 26.7 billion yen to 80.2 billion “due to an increase in sales from game software and networks services, partially offset by increased cost associated with the launch of the PS5 and losses recorded on PS5 hardware, resulting from strategic price points,” CFO Hiroki Totoki said on an earnings webcast.

Since the PS5 console launched in November, Sony sold 4.5 million cumulative hardware units as of Dec. 31, he said. “We are currently on track to meet our sales goals for the fiscal year of more than 7.6 million units, but we have not been able to fully meet the high level of demand from customers,” he conceded, pointing to a shortage of semiconductors used in the console as one major factor.

“We continue to do everything in our part to ship as many units as possible to customers who are waiting for PS5,” he told analysts.

Meanwhile, “thanks to continued stay-at-home demand and the launch of the PS5, we have achieved a very high level of user engagement,” he said.

Total PlayStation user game play in December was about 30% higher than the same month the previous fiscal year, he said. Also a positive contributor was the fact that, as of Dec. 31, a whopping 87% of PS5 users were subscribers to Sony’s PlayStation Plus paid subscription service, he told analysts.

Sony also “had more game software titles at the launch of the PS5 than at any previous PlayStation console launch in our history, and those titles have sold well,” he said. For example, its first-party game title Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, achieved sell-through of 4.1 million units as of Dec. 31, he said.

“Continuing with our strategy of enhancing our user engagement, we intend to take steps to further enhance the appeal of our Network Services offerings,” he told analysts, without providing any specifics on its plans.

Q3 Music sales, meanwhile, increased 22% from a year ago to  264.5 billion yen, while operating income increased 23.4 billion yen to 59.7 billion yen.

Recorded music streaming revenue continued to grow, increasing 21% from a year ago, the company said.

The company’s movie division, on the other hand, continued to be hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic as its film releases, including Ghost Busters: Afterlife, had to be postponed again as theaters remained closed, Totoki said. Sony profitability in that division, however, have improved this fiscal year, “primarily due to the postponement of marketing cost resulting from the repeated postponement of releases,” he said.

Sony Electronics Products & Solutions (EP&S) operating income grew 25.4% to 105.8 billion yen. “The operating environment improved somewhat” in Q3 “as stay-at-home demand for home AV products continued and demand for digital cameras and other products recovered,” the company said in its earnings announcement.

In TVs, the company was “able to secure a high level of profit resulting from our ability to maintain prices, reflecting a tight supply of panels, our efforts to shift sales to higher value-added models and a reduction in operating costs,” Sony said.

The company “faced a variety of constraints in regard to component procurement across multiple categories” in the EP&S division, “but we were able to mitigate the negative impact on profitability,” it said. As it prepares for the “transition to a new management team in April, we are further strengthening the profitability structure of the business and the management of the segment as one entity,” Sony added.