Sony PlayStation 5 lifetime sales reach 61 million, closing in on NES but slowing down fast

In brief: The PlayStation 5 has now sold 61.7 million units worldwide since its release in November 2020. This means it remains in fourteenth position on the list of best-selling consoles of all time, just a few thousand sales short of the NES. It's not all good news for Sony, though: the rate at which PS5 sales are falling is faster than analysts expected, and the figures are lower than the PS4's during the same point in its lifecycle.

Sony's financial report for the first quarter of FY2024 reveals that 2.4 million PlayStation 5 consoles were sold over those three months. That's down from 4.5 million sales in the previous quarter, and lower than the 3.3 million sales in the same quarter during 2023.

Analysts had been expecting PS5 sales of 3 million for the quarter, significantly more than the actual figure. Morningstar Investment director Kazunori Ito told Bloomberg that the PlayStation business is not as good as the numbers suggest, because its profits and revenue were inflated by the weak yen. He added that while Sony had said hardware sales would slow down, the pace is faster than anticipated.

The PS5's 61.7 million sales put it just behind the 13th-place NES's 61.91 million sales on the best-selling-consoles list. Sony's latest machine still has a long way to go before catching up to the PS4's 117.2 million lifetime sales. As you can see in the chart below, the PS4 had sold almost 2 million more units at the same point in its lifecycle.

The good news for Sony is that revenue from its Games & Network Services segment increased 12% year-over-year while operating income was up 32% from $335 million to $443 million. This was attributed to foreign exchange rates, along with increased sales of first-party games (especially Helldivers 2) and network services, mainly PlayStation Plus.

Even though income from software sales was up, likely due to higher game prices, actual unit sales were down from 56.5 million during the same quarter last year to 53.6 million in Q1FY24.

The report also highlights the ever-increasing move away from physical media to digital in the console market. 80% of sales were digital in Q1, whereas the average was 70% during the 2023 financial year. The death of physical console games has seen brick-and-mortar stores like GameStop struggle, while UK retailer Game, which ended its trade-in program earlier this year, was forced to deny rumors it was stopping all physical game sales.

Permalink to story:

Sony PlayStation 5 lifetime sales reach 61 million, closing in on NES but slowing down fast

The fact is the machine is nearly four years old and has had no price cut. It has been the case for a decade now that reducing the prices of these systems is more difficult and slower than it was a couple of generations ago.

They have already said there is not much room for significant price cuts, however it is possible Sony now has at least some wiggle room to do so if the margins made sense to them.

If there is a PS5 Pro launch later this year then I expect some sort of base system adjustment which could stimulate sales again, depending on the size of any cut.

61.7 million units worldwide - that's not very much. Makes gaming (at the high end of price) seem like a niche hobby still.