The PlayStation 5 (PS5 for short) has been a hotly demanded item since its launch in November 2020, there’s no doubt about that.
However, Sony had the misfortune of having to launch its latest and greatest console in the midst of a pandemic, with COVID-19 ravaging the world back in late 2020 and still today. And the thing is that it’s been incredibly difficult to get hold of Sony’s most recent PlayStation console…
Stock at major online retailers such as Amazon has sold out in seconds at times, surely leaving many buyers frustrated and even leading to Sony president Jim Ryan issuing an apology earlier this year.
It is likely that Sony’s playing down of initial demand and factories worldwide shutting down after the emergence of COVID-19 have led to the current situation. This, though, has not prevented Sony from selling a boatload of PS5 consoles to date.
Actually, as was recently reported on Forbes, the PS5 has sold almost as much as the PS4 did in the same time period, with Sony having shifted 13.4 million units of its latest console since its launch in November 2020. Meanwhile, the PS4 had sold 13.8 million units in the same time period.
Sony revealed sales for PS5 as part of its results for the July to September quarter. More than 3 million PS5’s were sold during that 3 month period, which is actually the best quarter for PS5 and only behind Q3 2020, in which 4.5 million PS5’s were sold as IGN reports.
However, while this may seem great for Sony, it’s likely the company’s top dogs might be wondering how many PS5s the company would have sold had it been able to meet demand, which is clearly much greater than supply right now.
Also, some of Sony’s figures for the July-September quarter were not so good.
The Japanese company saw the number of PlayStation Network users go down to 104 million (this was 114 million 9 months ago), while first party software sales are down more than 40 % compared to the same quarter last year. Total games sold between PS4 and PS5 (76.4 million) also declined when compared to the same three month period last year.
And as Forbes points out one of Sony’s main competitors in the console space, Microsoft, has two big exclusives planned for this fall (Halo Infinite and Forza Horizon 5) while Sony’s AAA heavyweight games like Horizon Forbidden West have been delayed out of 2021 entirely. Also, others like the promising GhostWire: Tokyo won’t be hitting shelves this year, and are now slated for release in 2022.
But still, if the PS5 continues to sell as well as it has been selling, and supply problems are solved so that everyone who wants to buy one can do so, the PS5 might yet turn out to be the best-selling console in history, even if it still has a while to go before matching the PS4’s incredible 116 million lifetime sales.
PS5 console (Sony)