As we suspected earlier in the year, Sony’s PlayStation 4 console has now racked up enough sales to become the second best-selling home console of all time.
Sony’s latest published sales figures for the console reveal it shifted another 2.8 million units over the July-September quarter, moving it onto 102.8m total sales. That’s enough for it to overtake Nintendo’s Wii on 101.6m and its own great-grandfather, the original PlayStation, which sold 102.6m consoles across its lifetime.
Back in the summer, the PS4 became the fastest console to sell 100 million units, but it’s not necessarily all good news. At 2.8m units, this has been the slowest Q2 in the console’s lifetime, and by some margin. Indeed in its six years on the market, the PlayStation 4 has only experienced five slower quarters, and four of those were the post-Holiday lull of January-March. The previous slowest Q2 was way back in 2014, at 3.3m.
That’s a pretty strong sign that sales are slowing down for the Four, and this should come as no surprise. Sony has already announced that its successor will be here at the end of the next calendar year and, though there’s still at least 12 months until that happens, a lot of players will be keeping their money trousered to save up for what’s likely to be a pretty expensive 2020. The PS5’s backwards compatibility and cross-generational play make it an easier decision too.
It’s unlikely then that the PS4 will, despite its record-setting ability to fly off the shelves, take the top spot in the charts. Helped by considerable longevity, the PS2 sold 155m consoles across its life, and that’s a figure that any other home console will struggle to get near. However, the PS4 should bow out at nigh-on 120m and firmly establish itself in second — with Sony consoles holding all of the top three spots.
As for PlayStation 5, it has a hard act to follow, but the credentials seem pretty compelling…
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