At the tail end of last year, a report estimated that 3.4 million PlayStation 5 units were sold in its first 4 weeks which is the highest ever for PlayStation console. Of course, PlayStation 5 has been a big hit for Sony continuing off the success of PlayStation 4. It had the biggest launch month in U.S. history and was the biggest console launch in the UK. No actual numbers have been released regarding PlayStation 5 by Sony until now. During the Q3 2020 financial report, Sony shared that 4.5 million PlayStation 5s shipped in 2020, putting it in line with the launch of PlayStation 4 in 2013. During the Earnings call, Sony also discussed their hopes for PS5 in 2021, and how they are planning to outsell the PS4s second-year sales of 14.8 million.
Sales increased 40% year-on-year. PS5 and PS4 game sales went up from 83.3 million in 2019 to 103.7 million in 2020. 18.4 million of the total game sales were First-Party titles. Digital sales went down to 53% from 59% but were up 50% from the previous year. PlayStation Plus subscribers reached 47.4 million. During the quarter, there were 114 million monthly active users on the PlayStation network. 87% of PlayStation 5 users are subscribers to PlayStation Plus. Sony also talked about one of its most notable first-party titles that released during the launch of PlayStation 5 but also available on PS4, Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It sold about 4.1 million units by the end of September. The launch of PlayStation 5 saw the most game software titles available than at any other previous PlayStation console launches and they all sold well.
Sony says that the 4.5 million PS5s sold has kept them on track to meet their sales goal of more than 7.6 million units for the fiscal year but notes that they “have not been able to meet the high level of demand from customers.” Talking about the supply situation regarding PlayStation 5, Sony wants to outsell what they did with the launch of PS4 and exceed the PlayStation 4’s second-year sales of 14.8 million, but Sony is having trouble with some of the parts for PlayStation 5. “We have to look at the global shortage of semiconductors. When we try to increase our capacity, we face difficulties because of this global situation, However, we are doing our best to exceed the original plan in terms of shipment.”