On Wednesday, Sony announced its latest quarterly earnings. One of the things taken away from the report is that PlayStation 5 (PS5) sales have fallen a bit compared to the same time last year. And while Sony only sold 2.4 million consoles in Q1 2024, it shouldn’t be something to worry about.
According to Mat Piscatella of Circana, with 61 million units moved, the PS5 continues to outsell the PS4 by about 7% for the same time on the market. And that’s with the first few months of the PS5’s life being during the Covid 19 pandemic along with a product shortage.
Personally, I still believe that exclusives will help move consoles. It’s not a console exclusive, but the current-gen only release of College Football 25 moved more systems in a single day on the Xbox side — specifically the Xbox Series S — than it had since the consoles first launched.
Games like Death Stranding 2 and Marvel’s Wolverine are likely to help move PS5 consoles when they launch. There’s also the eventual release of the PS5 Pro that, despite skepticism, is still planned for launch in 2024 as of writing.
Aside from PS5 sales, console sales in general remain strong for the current market. The Nintendo Switch, according to Piscatella, is just 1.1m units being the PS2 in lifetime-to-date (LTD) sales. On the Xbox side of things, the Xbox Series systems are on pace with the Xbox 360’s LTD numbers, and that’s the best-selling console in Microsoft’s history.
So, despite the fact that numbers have been lower over the year for general sales, it’s not a doom and gloom scenario for the console market. Things fluctuate like any other product, and you can expect a rebound to happen soon enough.
What do you think of the state of PlayStation 5 sales and where things stand with the console and consoles in general? For more Insider Gaming, read about Warner Bros looking to potentially sell off its games division.
Yes they are Jim Ryan promised double the sales of the PS4 by now it’s no where near close and worse they have upgraded hardware to sell next year the PS5 hasn’t justified itself.