PlayStation 5 sales are really starting to pick up, with 6.3 million units shipped in the last quarter. Total sales? Over 38 million.
In a reversal of the supply chain issues that marred its launch, the PlayStation 5 has managed to sell 6.3 million consoles in the past quarter – that’s from January to March 2023.
It’s a huge number, and given further context by games industry analyst Piers Harding-Rolls, who notes on Twitter that Sony has managed to set a new record. According to his reckoning, no other console has ever sold this well in the first quarter in any given year, and that 6.3 million figure is more than double the milestone set by the PlayStation 4, which shipped around 3 million units.
Sony ships a huge 6.3m units in the Jan to March qtr – that is a record for any console in Q1 and over 2x the PS4 record
It appeared unlikely in Jan but it has reached its upgraded 19m FY target following availability of an additional 1m units
Now to examine sell-through 😉 pic.twitter.com/1k4w6UKF5R
— Piers Harding-Rolls (@PiersHR) April 28, 2023
Assuming those consoles do actually, sell, it’ll bring the total number of PlayStation 5s flogged so far to 38 million. According to Eurogamer, Sony sold 7.1 million units in the last quarter of 2022.
Sony is also bullish about its sales for the rest of the year, projecting that it’ll sell 25 million PlayStation 5 consoles by the end of the next financial year in March 2024. If that projection’s accurate, it’ll mark a distinct rise over the previous year, when it sold 19.1 million units.
All told, the PlayStation 5 is a slower seller than the PlayStation 4 so far; that system had sold over 40 million units by the same stage, though it didn’t have severe supply chain issues or a cost-of-living crisis to contend with. Given that Sony is attempting to sell a system priced north of £389 in the current economic climate, the results are inarguably positive.
Improved PlayStation 5 sales have also had a knock-on effect on PlayStation Plus subscriber numbers, which are up by almost a million users on the last quarter’s 46.4 million.
Conversely, game sales are down slightly on last year, with 68 million units sold in the last quarter versus 70.5 million in Q4 2022. With the PlayStation 5’s install base rapidly growing, though, the number of games sold is also likely to increase in due course.
The PlayStation 5 has certainly come a long way from its December 2020. Is anyone still playing Godfall?
