Most successful Q1 in hardware history
Sony has released its financial results for the latest fiscal quarter, revealing that princely PlayStation 5 (PS5) hardware has surpassed 38 million sales since its launch back in the fall of 2020.
The first quarter of 2023 has been especially impressive for the PS5 platform, and has seen a total of around 6.3 million consoles shipped since the start of the year. This represents the most successful Q1 shipping totals for any console in gaming history, and is up a mammoth four million units over the same period in 2022. When compared to its predecessor, PS4, PlayStation 5 is tracking just behind that platform’s sales to the same point, suggesting that the coming years will see PS5 meet — and likely surpass — PS4’s total sales.
Sony also revealed that it currently counts 47.4 million PlayStation Plus subscribers, which is equal to the amount of subscribers counted for the same period in 2022. This sees the PlayStation brand recover from the dip it suffered over the course of 2022’s latter half. Game sales, however, continue to slide, as PS4 and PS5 software sales sold 68 million units in the first quarter of 2023, which is down 2.5 million from the 70.5 million titles sold in the same period 2022.
There are several possible reasons for this, including both the increase in PlayStation Plus subscribers utilizing the catalog of titles offered online as part of the service, as well as the staggeringly top-tier Q1 that was enjoyed in 2022, with releases including Elden Ring, Sifu, The King of Fighters XV, Horizon Forbidden West, and Gran Turismo 7.
Off the back of today’s figures, Sony is confident that it will ship 25 million consoles in the financial year ending March 2024 which, if secured, will represent a record in PlayStation hardware sales history.
