It looks like the semiconductor shortage is ancient history for the PlayStation 5, as it’s broken an all-time record for the last quarter on its way to catching up with its predecessor’s own record-breaking sales figures.
According to Sony’s final financial year report for 2022, covering the four quarters up to the end of March 2023, the PlayStation 5 has now shipped 38 million consoles to players. That’s only just behind the PlayStation 4’s 40 million units over the same 2.5-year period since their respective launches.
The PS5 has closed the gap courtesy of a massive Q1 which saw it sell 6.3 million units in what’s traditionally a very quiet part of the year. Although that’s slightly down on the 7.1m sold over the previous quarter — which covers Black Friday/Cyber Monday and the Christmas period — it’s a sales record for any console in any Q1 ever.
It’s more than triple the two million sold during the same quarter of the previous financial year, and more than double the three million PS4s sold in its best Q4 across its entire life. Indeed only the PlayStation 2 comes close to these figures, with 6.1m sold in Q4 for FY04.
That’s helped the PS5 to 19.1m sales across the financial year, which is almost as many as it had sold in the 1.5 years previously — since launch. It all adds up to 38.4m console sales, just 1.6m behind the PS4 at the same point of its life after being 20% down only nine months ago.
Sony Interactive Entertainment president Jim Ryan commented in December that the supply shortages were over, and it certainly seems like that’s the case. We could see the PS5 drawing ahead of PS4 soon, despite increased prices.
Game sales are down on the previous financial year, at 264m compared to 303m, although first-party titles still account for just over 43m of those as they did in FY21. Sony hasn’t provided a PS4/PS5 split for those figures, but does note that roughly two-thirds (67%) continue to be digital downloads.
PlayStation Plus remains broadly static, with the same 47.4m subscribers as 12 months ago despite recent changes to the service. That’s a million more than the previous quarter, and only just down on the 48m peak. Monthly active users continues to hover at just over 100m.
See more articles on PlayStation 5 and Sales Figures.
