Sony has announced that global PlayStation 5 unit sales have surpassed the 40 million milestone.
Less than a full three years into the console’s lifecycle, the PS5 has mirrored the success of its very successful predecessor, further continuing PlayStation’s strength in the console industry.
Rising skyward
As announced in a post on the official PlayStation Blog, the team at PlayStation thanks its fans for helping the PS5 reach this milestone.
That same post acknowledges how the PS5 was launched at a time where the team and the rest of the world for that matter, was “in a strange and different place” compared to when the system was first announced back in 2019.
As we all can certainly recall, 2020 challenged every industry, gaming included. Projects were pushed back and supply chains were strained extensively.
Although the PS5 launched on time, it, along with Microsoft’s Xbox Series systems and even the aged Nintendo Switch, all suffered from manufacturing and shipping delays. This led to severe unit shortages; not an uncommon phenomenon during the first year of a console’s life, but the issue was further exacerbated thanks to the pandemic-related issues.
Things only started to normalize around 2022 and have since been okay for the industry as a whole. PS5 production is now at a scale where new customers can walk into stored and easily pick one up, or get one online at MSRP; much different than the scalper-driven price hikes and online queues of the early days.
Had it not been for the initial slow burn due to all the complications outside of Sony’s control, perhaps the PlayStation 5 would be even further along sales-wise.
Nonetheless, the console is clearly healthy and will only grow as the “next-gen” begins to transition to its more normalised phase. That said, the PS4 is still going strong, with many multi-platform games still targeting both generations, along with new console units still being in production. It remains to be seen how long this will last, however.
For the sake of comparison, the Nintendo Switch is still doing remarkably well despite its age with the last official numbers putting it at 125.62 million units sold worldwide as of March 31, 2023. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to avoid reporting hard numbers for Xbox Series unit sales, a carryover from its discontinuation of unit reports from the early days of the Xbox One. One thing we all do know, however, is how hard it’s fighting to try and gain a leg up over Sony with the acquisition of Activision-Blizzard.
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